


A Time and A Place

by FabulaRasa



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-13 21:17:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11193606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: Hal and Bruce have a casual NSA thing going on, until the lines start to blur. And families, as Hal observes, are complicated things.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A note on canon compliance: Usually, this is not something I care much about. Comics canon is kaleidoscopic in its infinitely shifting and overlapping variables, and Hal Jordan’s family history is much less settled than Batfamily history, which is already a huge mess. Hal’s brothers Jake and Jim were introduced in the Earth-One era, but much of their history was altered or erased with _Crisis on Infinite Earths_ in 1985-1986. It has not always been clear how much of the pre-Crisis story remains intact, and with the launch of New 52 it became even less clear, which is why I have frequently felt free to jettison the whole mess with guiltless abandon and make up something I liked better. This story, however, preserves most of the pre-Crisis family line. The one major shift I have made (besides turning a couple of people into assholes) is to make Hal Jordan the younger brother rather than the middle brother. Why? Because it makes a better story for my purposes, that’s why.

“This is not a rest home,” said an angry voice. There was a loud noise like a door being slammed, or the shattering of his cranium, it was hard to tell. “Also, I’ve run as many diagnostics as I can downstairs, but I’m going to need the ring to get any serious work accomplished. Sadly the ring is currently attached to you, which means I’m going to need you. Awake yet?”

Hal blinked and his bleary eyes struggled to make sense of his surroundings, but his best attempts just resolved it into a large angry bear-like thing standing over him with a white rock in its hand, plus intermittent growling. Maybe the white rock was a coffee mug. Possibly the bear was Bruce. “’M awake,” he murmured, and rolled over. This landed him half off the bed, so that was a miscalculation. 

“’M good, ‘s all good, no worries, I’m up.” The rest of him slid off the bed, and he stumbled upright. The large bear behind the coffee mug did not look amused. “I said you could sleep in my guest room, not that you could sleep in my guest room naked.”

“Well who the hell wears clothes to go to bed. Anyway,” he said on a yawn. There was a sumptuous bathroom attached to this room, and he staggered toward it. “So I was thinking,” he said. He ran the tap and stuck his head under the blast of cold water, then shook like a dog. That was better. He began rummaging through the cabinet next to the expensively-lit mirror and found, there you go, a spare toothbrush. Still wrapped in plastic, no less. Rich people’s houses were like fucking hotels.

“I was thinking, I bet there’s a way to run this shit faster. See, what’s slowing us down is that the cave’s mainframe and the ring do not actually speak the same language, so the ring is translating everything several times in order to communicate, but I’m thinking there’s a shortcut, right?”

“I’m listening,” Bruce said. He sat in the chair beside the bed, looking thoughtful. Or possibly constipated. 

“So shortcut is,” Hal said around a mouthful of rich people’s toothpaste, no generic shit here that was for damn sure. He spat into the spotless basin. “Shortcut is, we teach the ring Kryptonian. I bet your mainframe has Kryptonian all up in that shit, yeah? There’s bound to be some linguistic overlap with something the ring speaks. Worth a shot.”

“That’s not actually a terrible idea.”

“Yeah, don’t hurt yourself there.”

“How long does it take the ring to absorb a new language? How much would you have to expose it to?”

“Good question. I don’t have any actual idea.” He was leaning in the doorway, drying his hands on a towel. He used the towel to scrub at his wet head. “Of course, there’s an even quicker way.”

“No.”

“I’m just saying, you let me take what you’ve got to Oa, I can analyze it with the Corps’ equipment there, I’ll have it back within—”

“You give the Corps any excuse to come meddling in Earth’s affairs, you know they’ll take it.”

“So fucking paranoid.” He balled up his towel and tossed it at the sink. “Oh, so hang on, Barry was gonna run some of this on the Watchtower for me, lemme check and see if he texted back.”

He strode over to the bed and began hunting through the covers for his cell. “Because what I was thinking was, even if the Kryptonian thing didn’t work out, there might be a language stored in the Watchtower’s database that the ring doesn’t know. Maybe there’s a match in there somewhere. Oh for fuck’s sake,” he sighed, because of course Oliver had chosen the early hours of this morning to blow up his phone with play-through summaries of his new video game. Now he was going to have to scroll through nineteen hundred messages just to find Barry, and most of Oliver’s messages were HOOOLYYY FUCCKINNNGGG SHIIITTT spread out over at least forty-seven messages, with one text for each letter. 

“Or,” Hal said, tossing the phone aside. It was a four-poster bed, because of course it was, and he leaned against one of the giant mahogany pillars. “Or, okay, you don’t like the idea of the Corps fucking around with Earth business, what about you come with me to Oa, we knock this analysis out in like two hours tops, no one has their greedy paws on the evidence we’re examining but you, my hand to God.”

“ _Or_ ,” Bruce said with emphasis, “you stop coming up with increasingly implausible shortcuts, and re-acquaint yourself with old-fashioned hard work.”

“You are aware you sound like you’re eighty-seven years old, right? How did you not age five years just saying that sentence?”

Bruce was silent, and looked fixedly at some point just to Hal’s left. “The problem with the Kryptonian might be their number system,” he said eventually. “It’s non-binary. I’m no xeno-linguist, but Kryptonian is a bit of an outlier, linguistically speaking. But it’s still a solid idea – there might be overlap in other languages stored in the Kryptonian files.”

“Yeah,” Hal said, and he headed back to the bathroom, scrubbing at his hair. “I mean, it’s also possible we’re just overthinking this, and what we’ve got is Terran in origin. That’s always within the range of possibility. And the ring is actually shit at Terran stuff, which is a continual joy in my life. Hey you don’t happen to have a razor in here too, do you?”

“Right hand cabinet. What do you mean it’s bad at Terran stuff?”

“Oh, shit like, it gets basic Earth elements confused, that kind of thing. The ring is a fucking intergalactic snob. It’s like some Lower East hipster, acting like it just got dropped in the middle of Kansas. I swear half the Corps is totally fucking astonished I can eat with a fork. Electric, nice,” Hal said, brandishing the razor.

“Do you think that’s contributing to any of the analysis issues we’re having?”

“Nope, because I don’t actually think what we’ve got has any Terran components, but it wouldn’t hurt to get some back-up forensic analysis going on.” He raised his voice over the whirr of the razor. “I know what you’ve got down in the Cave is SOA, but I bet the GCPD crime lab might have you beat for some things. Maybe send a sample of this to Jim Gordon, see what he says? Because like I said, if it’s Terran the ring is not going to be all that helpful.”

“Mm,” Bruce said. 

“Aw come on, you and Jim Gordon play well together. I know he has his issues with the capes crowd, but it wasn’t like I was gonna get all up in his grill. Gotham is your beat, I get that.” He blew on the heads of the razor – and he was pretty sure that was a three-hundred dollar once-over he had just given himself – and put it back on its stand. “Hey, what’s a Queer Cuss?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“This.” Hal picked up the bottle that rested beside the electric shaver. “Complimentary aftershave, really? Don’t see why it has to insult me, though.”

“Quercus,” Bruce sighed. “It’s Latin for oak, you ignoramus. Made by—just get some clothes on and let’s get to work, all right?” He was rubbing at his eyes. It was increasingly evident Bruce had not been to bed last night, but had stayed plugging away in the Cave long after Hal had come upstairs to collapse. The red rims of his eyes had red rims, and his normally short fuse had had several millimeters shaved off. It was going to be a fun day. 

“Clark could help us speed up some of this analysis,” Hal pointed out. 

“Already tried that. He’s tied up at the Planet all day long. We’re on our own. And if you’re thinking he might be able to facilitate the Kryptonian use, Clark’s Kryptonian is not actually that good.”

Hal gave a short laugh at that. “I’ll tell him you said that. Hey, did you try running the Theta-seventeen program?”

“Of course I did,” Bruce said, and Hal saw the muscle in his jaw tighten. “Several times. Unsurprisingly, with no success.”

“Yeah, I figured. Well, maybe that’s something else the ring can help with. If we—” Over on the bed his phone was buzzing. “Ok cool, maybe this is Barry. He’s on the Watchtower, I told him to try cross-matching some of our data with theirs. Jesus fuck, it’s Ollie, if Dinah does not take that controller away from him I’m gonna come over there and do it myself.” He tossed the phone back on the bed and turned back to Bruce, who was still not exactly looking at him.

“Hard copies of the data is going to be the most secure way to transmit to the Tower,” Bruce said.

“Slower, though.”

“Slower is fine if it’s done right.”

“Okay, but weren’t you the one crawling up everybody’s ass just day before yesterday about how time was of the essence here? I mean I’m not disagreeing—I think we bought ourselves a little breathing room last week, so let’s use it to figure this thing out right and stop running around like we got a five-alarm fire.”

Bruce just sat there silently. “What?” Hal said. “You disagree with my agreement?”

“No,” he said. 

“Then what?”

“I was just wondering. Is all this display because you think I am a eunuch, or because you have enough contempt for me that you’re enjoying the tease?”

“I—” Hal blinked, tried to form a word. 

“Forget it,” Bruce said, rising hurriedly. “Get your damn clothes on and let’s get to work, the sooner the better.” And with that the bedroom door slammed shut behind him, and Hal was left standing there like he had been punched in the gut. For a solid minute he couldn’t move, couldn’t even think.

“Fuck,” he breathed.

* * *

It had seemed like the obvious answer, that he and Bruce would work together on provenance issues. The attack on the Watchtower had come out of nowhere, was a lightning strike on a clear day, and though they had won, and the small alien fleet that had deployed against them was destroyed, still, it had been too near a thing for comfort. Who even knew the Watchtower was there? Who would target Earth? Hal knew enough intergalactic politics to know that Earth was a backwater, on no one’s radar in particular. This was an attack on the League, not on Earth, an attack by people worried about possible League expansion, he was betting—and for once, Bruce had agreed with him. 

So they took what debris from the attack they could, and got to analyzing, trying to see if they could figure out who the hell had just launched an attack before they got hit out of the clear blue again. Of course, Bruce was also working on increasing the Watchtower’s perimeter alerts and defense systems. They had all been working twenty-seven hour days, to get the Tower back to full operation, to figure out what the hell had hit them. He and Bruce had been closeted in the Cave non-stop, and last night—or was that early this morning—when Bruce had glanced up and barked, “Lantern,” he realized he had fallen asleep on his feet, and had only just stopped himself from literally tipping over onto a lab table.

“Go upstairs,” Bruce had said. “Sleep for a few hours, then we’ll get back to work.”

“’Kay,” Hal had mumbled, and headed off gratefully. Alfred had guided him to a bedroom, he had stripped off his clothes, and that was the last he knew until Bruce had pushed back his door this morning. They had been working so well together, was the thing. They hadn’t snapped at each other all day yesterday—well, no more than was usual for them. Things had been good, halfway to friendly, even. Until this morning, when it had all gone to shit. 

He pulled his clothes on, and even ate a few bites of the toast that Alfred had thoughtfully left outside his bedroom door. And then he headed downstairs to the Cave. “Okay, one more idea,” he said, on the stairs as he was coming down. He was still chewing an end of toast. Bruce was bending over another piece of debris on the lab table, his face buried in a spectroscope. He said nothing, just extended his hand for the ring, which Hal placed in his palm with a sigh.

“So like I was saying, one more idea. I can possibly increase the strength of the ring, and maybe its analysis, by increasing its power.”

Bruce raised his head fractionally. “That’s possible?”

“Theoretically. I would need my lantern to do it, but I can zip back to my place and get it, if we think it might be worth it to try.”

“This might have been helpful to know yesterday,” Bruce said.

“Well it’s not without risk to me, by the way, in case you were asking.”

“What kind of risk?” Bruce was glaring at him now.

“I have to be wearing the ring for it to work. And asking for a power surge is a little like sticking a fork in an electrical socket. It’s kind of unpredictable, and I’ve never actually tried it myself, just heard other Lanterns describe it. But I think it can be done, and I think I’ve got enough control to manage it. There’s a chance it could really help us here.”

“And there’s also a chance it could incinerate you.”

“I thought that might sweeten the deal for you.”

Bruce sighed. “Lantern—”

“No wait, please, okay? Just let me say this. I’m sorry. Really. I swear to God, I didn’t mean to be an asshole. Or at least, not that kind of asshole. It’s from the military, I guess—after a while you start to forget that walking around naked in front of other people is not just a completely normal thing. Anyway. I’m really sorry, okay?”

Bruce nodded curtly, and went back to his spectroscope.

“I also do not think you’re a eunuch, for fuck’s sake.”

“Leave it,” Bruce growled, like Hal was a dog rolling in a dead possum. Jesus Christ the things that came out of the man’s mouth sometimes. Almost it made Hal rethink this next part. Almost, but not quite. 

“Okay,” Hal said. “But what if I didn’t?”

Bruce raised from the spectroscope and glared at him. “Look,” Hal said, and his voice was so quiet it was nothing but a low thrum between them. “Truth is, I didn’t even know your door swung that way. But if you see anything here you like? Feel free to let me know, because I would be all over that.”

Bruce’s eyes were steady on him. “Is that so,” he said. 

“You name the time, you name the place.”

“I see.” Bruce went back to his spectroscope. For a second Hal thought that was the end of the conversation, but then Bruce raised up again. “Then do this,” he said, after a minute. “Get back upstairs. Get back in that bed. Naked. And wait for me there.”

Hal just stood there, until he saw the small arch of Bruce’s brow. _Motherfucker just called my bluff_ , Hal thought, and he grinned. 

“You got it,” he said. He sauntered slowly off, back up the stairs he had just come down. It wasn’t that he was unwilling, at all—he had meant it, about that whole “name the time and place” thing, but he hadn’t really thought Bruce would do anything about it. So yeah, he was a little surprised by that. And, truth be told, more than a little turned on. Most of the time Bruce’s irritating growl was about as sexy as a snarling Rottweiler, but when he had lowered his voice and said the word _naked_ , in that particular tone . . . well. His morning was definitely looking up.

Back in the upstairs guest room bed, he tried out various artful poses on top of the comforter. But it was a gorgeous early summer day outside, and the golden late-morning light was bathing the bed and half the carpet, and it was hard not to stretch out in it, luxuriate in it a little. And then he thought that maybe he would get under the covers, because Bruce had wanted him exactly like he had been before – _in_ the bed, he had said, not _on_ the bed. Really he should get under the covers. And then, the sun was so warm. . . and the sheets so soft, softer than any he had ever slept on. And the mattress, it was really unbelievable, firm in all the right places, just the right degree of downy. . . 

The sun slanted just a bit more across the impossibly soft and warm sheets, and Hal was gone.

He woke slowly this time.

No slammed door, no one growling at him. Just a slow swimming to consciousness, and when was the last time that had happened? He couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t been jerked out of sleep by an alarm clock or an emergency of some sort: get on flight deck, get to the Watchtower, report for duty, get to work. It felt like sinful luxury, this beautiful swimming to awakeness in golden afternoon light. 

Afternoon. 

Holy shit. He sat bolt upright, in a panic. Bruce was sitting in the chair beside the bed, wearing his glasses, working on schematics, from the look of it. Jotting something down. “Oh holy fuck,” Hal said. “Oh shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t—fuck. Did I—”

Bruce gave a small smile. “It’s fine.”

“No no no no _no_. No this is not happening, I am not going to fuck this up.” He threw back the covers, leaped from the bed, only staggering a little. “Okay, I’m good, let’s go, I got this.” He remembered one of the poses he had auditioned earlier – naked, leaning against one of the bed-posts, arms crossed, sultry stare in place. Or had he been leaning with his back against it, instead of his side? Hastily he re-arranged his position. “I’m good, come on, let’s go.”

Bruce was just staring at him, with an expression Hal had never exactly seen before. It made Hal think there might be something in his teeth. He glanced down at himself. He was covered in blanket creases from the bed-clothes. He reached up to his head, and his hair was sticking at right angles to his head. Hastily he smoothed it. “Okay,” he said, “okay, not my best work, but I can do better, I can—”

Bruce started laughing. But not like any laughing he had ever seen from Bruce before—which, to be honest, was more like an occasional snort, a wry huff of air. This wasn’t anything like that. This was Bruce, open-mouthed, head thrown back, face crinkled in delight, laughing deep and warm and full-bellied. Hal should have been offended, should have been furious, because here was Bruce openly _laughing_ at him for fuck’s sake, but he couldn’t feel any of that because he was so amazed at what he was seeing. 

Bruce was laughing, and it was beautiful. 

“Okay,” Hal said, “this is a little—it’s not really what I was going for, I have to admit.”

“Come here,” Bruce said, and he was still smiling, but the warmth of the laughter had seeped into every line of his face. “Please just come here.”

“Okay,” Hal said, standing in front of his chair. “Do you want me to—should I—”

“Please just shut up,” Bruce said, but there was no bite behind it, nothing other than the delicious warm brandy of that voice. He had never heard that voice when there wasn’t something sharp behind it. Bruce rose, and he was right next to Hal. Right in his space. 

“It was my fault,” Bruce murmured. “I got waylaid in the cave, and when I made it up here you were already asleep. You looked so exhausted, I couldn’t bear to wake you. And also you looked very. . . lovely.” He raised a hand and brushed with the edges of his fingers Hal’s hairline, his temple. A touch so light Hal might have imagined it. 

He was glancing down Hal’s body now, a slow appreciative meandering of his eyes. And yet it wasn’t ogling, somehow, wasn’t a leer, wasn’t anything like that. Hal wasn’t sure anyone had ever looked at his naked body like that. He reached for Bruce’s shirt and started unbuttoning it, and Bruce let him, just watched his hands. Hal gently pushed the shirt off, and froze with his hands on Bruce’s shoulders. “Christ,” he breathed.

Bruce glanced at where Hal was staring, down at his chest. “It was Cluemaster,” he said. “Last year."

Hal shut his eyes. The scar on Bruce’s chest was deep and continuous. The motherfucker had carved a bat on Bruce’s chest, carved a fucking bat, carved it in his blood. Bruce would have been conscious for it. There would have been so much blood. 

“It’s fine,” Bruce whispered. “I’m fine.”

“I’m sorry he’s dead.”

“I’m not.”

Hal tilted that beautiful face toward him, and seized his lips. Kissed him. This was not exactly like he had thought it would be. Bruce was letting himself be kissed, and now he was gently kissing back. Definitely, definitely not how he had thought it was going to be. 

“Want to get back in bed?” Bruce said softly, and Hal nodded. He helped Bruce off with the rest of his clothes on the way. Most of them, anyway. His underwear Bruce slipped off once they were under the covers. His hands went exploring. There was more kissing. Really delicious kissing. 

“Kinda thought you’d be a little more dom,” Hal murmured.

“Is that what you like?”

“No,” he said.

“What do you like?”

It was not a question anyone had ever asked him in bed before. “I. . . this, I think.”

“Me too.” Bruce rolled them slightly, but it was only to give him a better angle on Hal’s mouth. Bruce’s body against his was firm and warm. Their cocks were nestled against each other, and Bruce had started just a slow rocking motion. 

So, to the degree that he had thought about Bruce and sex before, he had thought one of two things would be true: a) Bruce would have a completely outfitted Sex Dungeon behind some rock wall in the Cave that involved, like, whips and chains and terrifying abuse of stalagmites; or b), Bruce would be so completely repressed and stiff that he would barely be able to move his arms comfortably in bed, and sex with him would actually be terrible. And as it turned out, neither of those things was true. Bruce was not some hooded sex fetishist, and he was not at all repressed or awkward in bed. What he was, was quiet and slow and an excellent, devastating kisser. Hal kept wanting to kiss him, and it was clear Bruce was happy to kiss him for hours. 

They didn’t do anything more than grind together for the longest time, and just this simple make-out session was getting Hal so hard he was afraid he might come close to losing it. He kept having to back his body off the edge, because their pace kept not ramping up any, but Hal’s balls were starting to ache. Bruce was hard enough to drive nails, but appeared in no hurry to do anything about it. 

“There’s something I want,” Bruce whispered, and Hal thought okay, here we go, cue the satin whips and handcuffs. 

“Okay,” Hal said, and Bruce slid down his body and had his mouth around Hal’s cock before he was really aware that was where things were headed. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he moaned, because if he had thought Bruce’s tongue was wickedly good in his mouth, there were no words to express what it was doing to his cock. “Fuck, Bruce, fuck that’s so good fuck,” he gasped. He was digging his fingers in Bruce’s hair, he didn’t even care. 

“I’m close, I’m so close, I can’t— _fuck_ —” 

And as it turned out, he was the one who was awkward in bed, because like some teenager who wasn’t in control of his body, about fifteen seconds into getting sucked he was coming in Bruce’s mouth. Not at all elegantly, either—his head thrown back, groaning, shaking, gasping his pleasure into Bruce’s waiting mouth, that unbelievably delicious mouth that sucked down all of him, that swallowed him. Another wave of orgasm followed his first, sharper even. He cried out, he knew he did. He was still limp and destroyed when Bruce crawled back up him, grinding hard. Fuck, but Bruce was cranked and breathing hard. 

“You want me to—”

Bruce grabbed his hand and pressed it to his cock, and Hal pulled him close and just started jerking him, which couldn’t have been all that awesome a hand job considering his own nerve endings were just now thinking about re-connecting to his muscles, but whatever, it seemed to get the job done. Bruce had his face buried in Hal’s shoulder as Hal jerked him, just steady and firm, nothing frantic, because he was getting the hang of how Bruce liked things. 

“That’s it, baby,” he murmured, and he felt Bruce shudder, felt his groan right in his neck, and his hand was covered in warm and wet. Bruce dug fingers into him and kept fucking him, and Hal gentled him through several waves. Strange, wild things were happening in Hal’s chest. He held Bruce tighter, and Bruce held onto him too. 

“Bruce,” he choked out. “Fuck this feels good.”

“Mmm,” Bruce said into his neck. 

Hal got them more or less wiped, and here was another surprising thing: he had not thought Bruce would be much for lying in bed afterward, but apparently he was. Even more surprising, it was back to kissing. Hal had never actually kissed a guy after coming. Actually, this whole thing was pretty counter to his previous experience with guys, not that he would have let Bruce know that. But if they kept kissing like this, if Bruce kept running that hand up and down his back, letting those fingers knead his ass, stroke his side, then he was going to get hard again, and probably sooner rather than later. He’d never actually come twice in bed with a guy, mostly because he wasn’t really into sticking around after.

But after a while Bruce’s hand slowed down, and then stopped, and Hal realized he had fallen asleep. He raised his head to look at him. Yep, sound asleep: breathing even, face relaxed, every line softened. He must be exhausted. He himself had slept twice now, but he knew for a fact Bruce hadn’t slept in at least twenty-four hours. Hal studied him, and let himself ghost a brush of fingers on his hairline. Bruce’s eyes fluttered open.

“Get some sleep,” Hal whispered. “I’m gonna go downstairs and see what I can get done. Stay here, okay?”

“Mmm,” Bruce said again, and the eyes drifted shut. On impulse, Hal leaned forward and pressed a kiss on his chest, right on the left corner of his scar, where Cluemaster’s knife had gouged deepest. Bruce’s breathing was back to deep and even, and he didn’t stir.  
 


	2. Chapter 2

So that was the story of how once, he slept with someone in the League. 

It made him wonder, was this something that happened a lot? Like, he knew Ollie and Dinah slept together, on account of actually being married and all, but they were the exception that proved the rule. As a general thing, sleeping with someone you worked with was a bad idea, and Hal was a big believer in the time-honored practice of “don’t shit where you eat.” So this particular one-off he chalked up to stress and sleep deprivation, and moved on, not really thinking about it again.

Except when he did. 

From time to time, in the days and weeks that followed, he found himself wondering: was this something Bruce tended to do? Had everyone slept with Bruce, and maybe he was the last one to do it? That didn’t seem likely, though. For one thing, Barry was straight as an arrow, and if you had handed him a naked male, Barry would have looked as confused as if you’d handed him a chest of drawers from IKEA minus the instructions. And Clark was. . . well, who knew about Kryptonians, probably best not to inquire, but he was banging Lois, the point was. What about Diana? That was probably a thing, she and Bruce were probably regularly doing it. Or had done it in the past. Maybe they’d even had a threesome with Clark. Hal was always making threesome jokes about the three of them, but maybe it was more than a joke. Bruce was clearly a little more down-to-fuck than he had thought him in the past. 

But the point was, he put the incident out of his head. And if it survived in more than a few jerk-off fantasies – fantasies that explored what might have happened if he had stayed in that bed, and Bruce had woken up, and they had gotten a little more adventurous – then he couldn’t reasonably be blamed for that. And if sometimes the fantasies weren’t even about that—if sometimes they were just about the things they had actually done, about Bruce’s quiet groan into his neck, about the feel of that thick cock pulsing in his hand—then he wasn’t going to worry about that either. 

Because truly, apart from those stray wonderings and fantasies, he didn’t spend a whole lot of brain space on the issue. Which was why he wasn’t actually prepared for the text he got from Bruce, three weeks later.

 _2519 Park Boulevard_ , the text read. _Penthouse. 9:30 PM._

Hal just stared at it, because what the hell? 

_What the hell is this?_ he texted back.

_You did say I could name the time and place._

Hal all but laughed aloud. _Okay, you realize that was not like a lifetime offer,_ he wrote back.

_Are you objecting? I can move down the list, no problem._

_Oh no I didn’t say I was objecting. Just pointing out the obvious._

_Good then._

_Actually I need it to be ten though. I’m logging a night flight, I’m gonna be up against it to make 9:30._

_No problem. Door code is 17947._

_So a list, huh?_

_I was being metaphorical._

_On this metaphorical list, what number am I again?_

_See you at ten sharp._

So this wasn’t the story of how once, he slept with someone in the League. As it turned out, it was the story of how for the first time in his life, he slept with the same guy twice. It really made him sound like a shit, when you put it that way. It didn’t hit him that that was what he was about to do until he was in the parking garage at the Palladium Park Boulevard, gripping the steering wheel of his Honda. That was when he realized what he was about to do. Somehow it had never occurred to him that he hadn’t, before. For whatever reason.

But once he was in the brass-and-mirrors elevator, silently whizzing him up to the thirty-seventh floor, he was starting to remember the reason he hadn’t done this before. Women were great – they were smart in about a thousand directions at once, they smelled awesome, they generally had better things to worry about than being a dick to you. Guys were the opposite of that, in every possible way: they were usually idiots, they often smelled not-so-awesome, and they had only one thing to worry about, and that was how to be an asshole to everyone in their immediate vicinity. On the other hand, cock, so it evened out. But guys were for fucking, and that was where you left it. 

By the time he was punching in the door code at the sleek marbled entrance of Bruce’s penthouse, he was pretty pissed about Bruce’s little assumption that Hal’s offer had been a lifetime booty call, to be redeemed whenever he felt like it. Because that was the kind of shit guys would pull. Dominance games. Control. That was what they wanted, and that was the name of Bruce’s little game, all right – one more thing for Bruce fucking Wayne, a.k.a. Master of the Universe, to own. Hal was going to walk in and set him straight, let him know that was the last time he ever, ever texted Hal Jordan a set of co-ordinates and expected him to leap at it. 

Of course he knew exactly what Bruce’s game would be. He knew exactly how guys like that worked, because hell, he was guys like that. Bruce had let things be slow and easy last time, but this time he was going to sink his teeth into Hal’s neck and use him like he wanted. Last time had been to lull him into saying yes, this time. The world was full of warm bodies, and as warm bodies went, Bruce’s was pretty spectacular, but that was no reason to break his cardinal number-one rule of fucking guys: never, ever do it twice. 

The penthouse was even more impressive than he had thought it would be – all floor-to-ceiling windows and glimmering views of the city below, soft lighting and understated furniture. Also, much more empty than he had thought it would be. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. If that motherfucker had stood him up. . .

“Bruce?” he called.

“In here.”

Hal followed the voice and ended up in the kitchen, which had more gleaming surfaces than the elevator, even. Bruce was. . . what the hell was he doing?

“What the hell is that?”

“Mongolian beef,” Bruce said, looking up in surprise. “I took a few guesses as to what you might like. I thought with a late flight you might not have eaten.”

“Oh,” Hal said. This was where he was supposed to say _Look asshole, whatever dominance game you’re playing here, you can fuck right off_. But it was hard to square that with the man licking soy sauce off his fingers and peering into a carton of moo goo gai pan. “Well. . . thanks.”

“Something wrong?”

Hal tried to smooth the scowl off his face. “Ah. . . no, I’m just. . . are those dumplings?”

“Help yourself.”

Hal speared a dumpling with a chopstick. It was so good he practically moaned. Much better than the take-out in his neighborhood. “God, give me those,” he said, and tugged the Styrofoam box closer. 

“Busy night at Ferris?”

“Ridiculous,” Hal said, around a mouthful of dumpling. “So Carol got the contract for this plane that’s supposed to have night instrumentation that blows the F-16 out of the water. As in, this sweetheart can not only lock fire while pulling Gs, her air-to-ground _and_ air-to-air are unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. And her scanning—I got quicker target locks than I ever did in a Viper. This is some next gen shit, I’m telling you. Got any wasabi?”

“Over there. How did Ferris Air get a contract on a plane like that?”

“Carol’s uncle has a contact on the Appropriations Committee who owes him a favor. I mean yes, the whole deal is corrupt as hell, but goddamn that bird is a thing of beauty. Maybe too beautiful, though.”

“How so?”

“Well.” Hal speared another dumpling and sighed. “For one thing, she’s fucking complicated. And I’m not sure she’s got enough fail-safes. Like, you make one mistake with instrumentation that complex, you’re gonna be in a flat spin if you’re not in a bird that’s got your back, you know? Any specs have got to assume that at some point, for like point-seven seconds, the pilot is going to zone out a little bit. Human nature. I dunno, maybe it’s the panel—a re-design should take care of some of that, even though I’m not a big fan of over-conditioning the flight panel. But that’s more information than Ferris pays me to deliver, so.”

“That ought to be exactly what they pay test pilots to deliver.”

“Maybe. Who knows, maybe in John Glenn’s day it was. But these days, we’re just there to make sure their multi-billion dollar investments pay off. No one actually gives a shit about the pilots, or if their fancy new machines just mean fancier new ways for pilots to get killed.” 

He chased down a stray bit of noodle in the corner of his carton—and then paused. Looked around the kitchen. There were steaming food containers, and an open bottle of wine. Bruce had just been asking him about things that interested him, listening to him, drawing him out a little. In the other room, there was some music playing. The lights of the city were shimmering out the giant windows. Hal put down his chopsticks. 

“Oh,” he said. “Ah. Am I on a date?”

“I suppose that’s up to you.”

Hal wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “I don’t date guys,” he said. Bruce was silent. “It’s not—it’s just an orientation thing. That’s all.”

Bruce was still quiet, just leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, studying Hal. Hal had a quick flash of remembering that body, naked and pressed against his. That mouth. “You get what I’m saying,” Hal said. 

“I do. Sex is fine, but no dumplings?”

“I. . .” That wasn’t exactly what he had meant to say. Was it? There was something confusing about being here. Something confusing about Bruce. “What I meant was. . . this is just not my usual deal, is all.”

“Mm. I’m going to ask a question, but I don’t want you to take it the wrong way. Have you ever had sex with another man that wasn’t in a bathroom stall?”

“Hey now that’s not—”

“Look,” Bruce said. “Neither of us has a life that lends itself to dating people. I don’t do that any more than you do, so believe it or not this is not my audition to become your teenage boyfriend, you little narcissist. What I am into is occasional stress relief, and occasional stress relief can involve a medium-grade Pinot and the enjoyment of someone’s company as well as sex. That’s just called being a courteous adult, which I realize is not, as you say, your ‘usual deal.’ Is that clear enough for you?”

“Okay. I think you insulted me at least three times in your little speech about being a courteous adult.” 

There was a small quirk in the corner of Bruce’s mouth. “Consider it foreplay.”

“You are such a complete prick,” Hal said, but it was more like a statement of fact than any kind of dealbreaker. And then Bruce leaned over to kiss him, and Hal forgot the next thing he was going to say. 

Funny thing was, the thing he had thought would happen – Bruce getting all dominant on him – did not really happen. The fucking was pretty much like it had been before, just with less exhaustion. And if he had thought coffee-fueled and sleep-deprived Bruce was amazing in bed, that was nothing to a well-rested Bruce in a private penthouse with all the time in the world. Hal literally came three times. 

It wasn’t that Hal was bad in bed, or had never had amazing sex, or anything like that. He had, of all kinds. But the thing was, Bruce was so _focused_ in bed, and that focus was one-thousand percent making Hal cry out in pleasure. And here was the weird thing – he seemed actually _interested_ in Hal’s pleasure. Like, making Hal bleed come wasn’t just about notching his belt, but about Hal himself, in some hard-to-express way. He watched Hal, and seemed to get off on Hal getting off. And Hal found himself imitating that, found himself watching Bruce in the same way, trying to make it about Bruce’s pleasure too. 

He had been right about Bruce wanting to move to fucking, though. That part he had not been wrong about. But he had been wrong about Bruce’s expectations – Bruce actually wanted Hal to fuck him, not the other way around, and the only issue with that was that after like an hour of being edged and sucked and basically driven to the brink of insanity, he now had to hold it together and not completely lose it the minute he sank deep into Bruce’s incredible body. But maybe Bruce thought it was like a technique he had, the way he kept stopping and going very still and holding his eyes shut – like some sort of sex Zen thing, and not a desperate attempt to keep from coming his ever-living brains out. 

He woke about four in the morning, startled he had slept that long in a strange bed, and dressed silently, showing himself out. He glanced back at the wide bed, and the lights of Gotham’s skyline out the windows. Bruce was angled pretty much entirely across the bed, face-down, tangled in sheets, sleeping with the same sort of abandon he fucked with. 

He wondered what would happen if he went over to Bruce and knelt beside him and brushed a farewell kiss on his cheek, or stroked his hair. Said thank you for the evening. Would that be weird? He stood there a long time, watching Bruce, debating it. In the end he left without doing anything. But then at the door of the penthouse he paused, and went back into the kitchen. Their debris of the night before was still everywhere. Were there maids who came in and took care of that sort of thing, or would Bruce tidy up before he left today? Hal grabbed one of the take-out menus in the bag, and scrawled _Thanks for the dumplings_ across it. And then a big _H_ at the bottom, because not signing off in some way sounded douchy.

He headed off for the elevator, and was all the way to his car when his cell buzzed.

 _You’re very welcome_ , it said, and Hal grinned.


	3. Chapter 3

The third time, the text was even shorter, and dispensed with the address entirely. _Ten PM_ , it said. 

Hal sighed. _What, like, today? You couldn’t give me like 24 hours notice before your next emergency booty call?_

_Is it a problem?_

_What if I said it was?_

_Then I would say, text me a day and time that works better for you._

Hal sighed again. _Tonight’s fine_ , he wrote. _I’ll be there._

His day was spectacularly shitty after that, with failed flight after failed flight, ending with Carol yelling at him, and him yelling back, and then there was another string of messages from Jim, which he didn’t even bother to look at. He could see enough, just glancing at them. So by the time he pulled into the garage at 2519 Park, he was in a foul mood and looking to take it out on someone. But there was no one other than Bruce, and that wasn’t fair to him. He should call Carol and apologize. But she had been the one to yell first, goddammit. 

His ring hummed at him when he was in the elevator. “You are fucking kidding me,” he muttered. When he emerged into the marble foyer, he sat down on one of the upholstered benches and twisted his ring to read the message. A high priority from the Corps: he was expected to report in sixteen hours. No more information given. Of fucking course. He sat there on the stupid fluffy bench, his head bowed, his hands knotted on the back of his head, his eyes shut. He wanted to pick up the bench and hurl it at the mirrored panels. His phone buzzed – yet another message from Jim. His hands tightened. 

“What’s wrong?” Hal hadn’t even heard the door to the penthouse click open. Bruce was standing in front of him. Hal shut his eyes again.

“Nothing,” he said.

“Then why are you sitting out here?”

“Because I want to,” he said, and fuck, there was a tremor in his voice, fuck. He heard Bruce’s footsteps walking away, and the door of the penthouse click again. After a few minutes Bruce was back, and there was a glass nudging at his hand.

“Drink,” Bruce said. 

“What’s in it?”

“Stress relief.”

“I thought I was the stress relief.”

“Come on, drink up.”

Hal put his hands down and took the glass. It was one of those fancy glasses with diamond shapes and stuff cut into it. Probably a name for that. He took a sip of the rich brown liquid and fought the cough at it, it was so strong. Bruce had a glass too, and he smiled at Hal’s cough. He knocked his own glass back with a stiff wrist, draining all of it at one go.

“What is this?” Hal said.

“It’s an excellent rye that I save for days like these.”

“Okay,” Hal said, and swallowed as much as he could manage. It burned like fire. He had still only drained like a third of his, but Bruce had the bottle in his other hand, and had refilled his own glass. Hal watched him knock back the second glass. 

“You drink a hell of a lot,” Hal said.

“Yes.”

The whiskey was settling in his veins now, rich and warm. He could feel the unstringing of all his muscles. So now his apology conversation with Carol would also have to be the “I’m reporting off-world tomorrow, k thanx bye” conversation that she always loved. Whatever. 

“So when you say excellent,” Hal said, “how much does excellent cost, in your world?”

“It’s a Glenmorangie 1981.”

“Okay, that means nothing to me.”

“It’s about five thousand a bottle.”

Hal choked on his next swallow, and tried not to spew it out. “Jesus Christ,” he croaked. 

“It’s all relative,” Bruce shrugged. “Everything in my life is expensive. Five thousand is not that much to pay for something, all things considered.”

“You know what a phenomenal douchenozzle you sound like, right?”

“Oh yes,” Bruce said, knocking back some more whiskey. “But it is good whiskey. Is there room on this. . . whatever it is you’re sitting on. It looks like something stolen from Bette Davis’ dressing room. I don’t think these are actually meant for sitting.” He lowered himself gingerly beside Hal, and the tufted monstrosity creaked a little.

“It’s not yours? I thought all this shit out here was yours.”

“No, this is the building’s. Marble and mirrors is not exactly my taste.”

“Right, you’re more of an understated robot dinosaur kind of guy,” Hal said, and started laughing. He couldn’t quite stop. Bruce was laughing, too, and Hal couldn’t get enough of what Bruce looked like laughing. Bruce refilled Hal’s glass, and then his own. 

“Listen to you,” Hal said, watching the brown liquid slosh into the crystal. “Bette Davis. When the gay in you comes to the surface it really is something to see, huh?”

Bruce laughed again at that one. “I like old movies,” he said. “I watched them with Alfred when I was little. He’s the Bette Davis fan, not me. I’m more of a Katharine Hepburn man.”

“Fuck yes,” Hal said, his head tipping back against the wall. “Hepburn. Jesus Christ. I used to watch all those old movies with my mom. She could log like ten hours straight watching them. ‘Course she was a drunk, so probably she was passed out at the time, and I thought we were having quality time.”

“ _Was_ as in, she is no longer a drunk, or _was_ as in, she herself is no longer?”

“Ah, the former. No wait, the latter. I get confused. Whatever. She’s dead, and she was a drinker to the end. Far as I know, anyway. Hey Bruce, how often do you sleep with Selina Kyle?”

Bruce found his whiskey very interesting, apparently. He swirled his glass and studied it. “Not that often, these days,” he said. “We’ve had a. . . parting of the ways, you might say.”

“Oh. Sorry. I mean, I guess I’m not really sorry, if that’s why I’m getting the booty calls these days.”

“It’s not,” Bruce said. “She and I have been done for some time. I thought something about her that was untrue, and she corrected me.”

“Okay. What was it you thought?”

“Ah, that she loved me,” Bruce said, and tossed back some more whiskey.

“Fuck,” Hal said, and laughed. “I mean, that’s rough. Sorry man.”

“Your sympathy is very moving,” Bruce said, but he was laughing grimly.

“Come on, everyone who ever spoke five words to her knew she was a cunt.”

“Yes. But I suppose, with people like that, you fool yourself into believing that you are. . . the exception. That the rules don’t apply to you, that you are special. It’s not that I didn’t know who she was. It’s just that I thought that was for other people, not for me.”

“What a bitch.”

“That’s the second misogynistic slur you’ve used. Cut it out.”

“You can take the guy out of the military,” Hal said. “You wanna hear slurs, I know some awesome ones.”

“I bet you do.” Bruce knocked back the rest of his glass. Hal had lost count of how many that was, for him. Bruce stood.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go forget about your shitty day and my terrible taste in relationships by coming until we black out.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Hal managed to stand up. “Only, how drunk are you?”

“Me? Not in the least.”

“Okay. That’s. . . disturbing. You must drink a hell of a lot.”

“Yes, you’ve said that before. Come on, we need to hurry.”

“Yeah okay, but why?”

“Because you’re wearing your flight jacket and jeans, and your ass has never looked more delicious. Come here.” Bruce yanked him by the wrist and had him backed against one of those ridiculous mirror walls before Hal was really aware it was happening. Bruce’s hands were at his waist, and they were exploring, running up his sides underneath the flight jacket, running down to cup his ass. 

“My life would be considerably easier,” Bruce whispered into his jaw, “if you were less attractive.”

“Same. Less talking, more fucking.”

“You got it.” 

Their mouths were on each other, and the kissing was messier, hungrier than it had been before. God, Bruce got him cranked. Bruce was being a little rougher with him tonight, and it felt so fucking good. Hal was rough right back with him, ate his mouth, let him feel how much he wanted him. Wanted this. 

“Hey Bruce,” he murmured. “How come you haven’t tried to fuck me?”

That had exactly the opposite effect he wanted, because Bruce stopped and pulled back a bit to look at him. The thumb was still stroking his jaw though. “Because that’s clearly not something you like,” Bruce said. 

“Oh,” said Hal. That hadn’t actually occurred to him. “So that’s. . . okay?”

A strange expression flitted across Bruce’s face, like a shadow, and was gone. “Do I seem like I’m having a bad time?”

“No, I just. . . never mind. Forget I said anything. Now I sound like an asshole.”

Bruce laughed softly. “Trust me Jordan, you always sound like an asshole.” He was back to kissing him though, long and deep, and Hal sank into it again. Literally sank; he was still up against the wall here, and with every kiss he was melting a little bit more into Bruce, losing a little bit more leverage. Bruce was all over him tonight. 

“No but the thing is,” Hal managed, wrenching his mouth away for a second, “it’s not like it’s _not_ my thing. I just haven’t done it, is all.”

“Ah,” Bruce said. 

“So what I’m saying is—”

“Yes I cracked the code.” Bruce’s mouth was back on his, even hungrier. Hal kissed him hard, let his hands dig into Bruce’s back.

“You’re such a fucking asshole,” Hal sighed, and Bruce laughed into his mouth.

* * *

Hal woke close to dawn, and saw Bruce leaning against the glass wall of the penthouse’s bedroom, staring out at the city. He was naked, except for the glass of whiskey in his hand. There was something in his other hand, because Hal saw him toss it in his mouth and wash it down with the whiskey. A pill of some kind. Hal watched him for a bit, leaning against the window there. It wasn’t often you got a chance to watch Bruce’s face when he wasn’t aware he was being watched. It was. . . hard to look at, in its unguardedness. He was clearly thinking about something, though.

After a while Bruce tilted his head back at the bed and met Hal’s eyes. They watched each other for a minute. “What are you doing awake?” Bruce murmured.

“Someone’s brooding too loud.”

“Mm, is that so.” Bruce set his glass down and crawled back onto the bed, on top of Hal. “Well hey there,” Hal said sleepily, and Bruce’s naked body stretched on top of him, pinning him. It was a position designed to remind Hal that Bruce had at least twenty pounds of muscle on him, but it was not uncomfortable. 

“Who’s Jim?”

Hal’s blood ran cold. “Did you just read my fucking messages, you son of a bitch?”

“No, your phone pinged a bit ago and I glanced at it. Who’s Jim?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because I want to know who the hell talks to you that way.”

Hal snorted. “I’m a big boy.”

“Mm. And getting bigger, I’d say.” Bruce rocked back and forth on top of him a bit, and one hand went questing in between them to rub at Hal’s cock. Hal made an appreciative noise, and Bruce started kissing his jaw. Hal turned his face so it was a mouth kiss. 

“You wanna go again?” Hal whispered.

“You’re tired.”

“I can sleep in tomorrow. Today. Whenever it is.”

“Good,” Bruce said. “Who’s Jim?”

“You are a fucking dog with a bone, anyone ever tell you that? Jim is my brother.”

“He sounds like a prince.”

“Yeah, we’re close. He’s been after me to go to this family thing, and I have no intention of going, so I’m ignoring him. Jimbo just loves being ignored, let me tell you.”

Bruce had gone quiet. He was watching Hal’s eyes. “Why does he hate you?” 

_He doesn’t hate me_ , he started to say, but couldn’t quite say it. Bruce wasn’t exactly wrong, but he had never put it to himself in quite that way before. It was just hearing it put so baldly that was like a knife in the gut. Well. No one had ever accused Bruce of tact. “Families are complicated,” he said evasively.

“You don’t say. What’s the family thing?”

“What’s the what?”

“The family thing he’s trying to get you to go to.”

“Oh.” Hal shut his eyes. “He’s—I don’t know, some stupid thing next month. Believe me, I’d be happy to blow him off and lose his number, if it weren’t for his kids. I’d be even happier to shove Jim off a short cliff, but not them. They’re pretty awesome, and they deserve to know that not all adults are endless dickholes. What?”

“Nothing. Just never thought of you as interested in kids.”

“Hey, I like other people’s kids just fine. Normal kids, not the little murder-bots you churn out. _Your_ kids terrify me.”

“As they should. So you’re just going to ignore him?”

“Yep. That is exactly what I’m gonna do. Because unlike his sad and boring life, I actually have something interesting to occupy me.” And with that he rolled them over and draped himself across Bruce, who smirked at him. “Something very, very interesting.” 

He began trailing kisses up Bruce’s chest, pausing like he liked to do, to give the corner of the scar some extra attention, and the nipple on that side. Cluemaster’s knife had missed Bruce’s nipple by like an eighth of an inch on that side, the fucking psychopath. Hal suckled him, and relished the groan Bruce made. There was a hand burrowing into his hair, caressing it. 

“You get me really fucking hot, you know that,” Hal murmured, raising his head before he lowered it again to kiss and suck and lick. And it was true – Bruce’s body was this incredible feast, and he could never get enough, never taste enough. 

In the morning, Hal was the one who woke late, and alone. The penthouse was empty. He wondered if Bruce had ever gone to sleep.  
 


	4. Chapter 4

Hal went off-world for a while after that, and didn’t really think about Bruce again, or whatever strange thing they had been doing. Didn’t think about it until he was back on Earth, and found himself at a bar, some hideous bar Ollie had recently discovered with glowing floors and loud music and women in dresses the size of napkins. There was one woman, though, a brunette with long thick hair and a wry smile, and he chatted her up at the bar, and they laughed together about Oliver over at the other end of the bar and the bright green drinks random strangers were pouring into his mouth as he stretched out on the luminescent bar. She was funny, and she had a world-class smile, and her legs were long sun-baked perfection, and when she leaned over and said, in a low throaty voice, “So, are you seeing anyone?” he opened his mouth to say hell no but couldn’t quite get the words out. 

So he mumbled something about the bathroom and found his way to a side exit and stepped out into the alley behind the bar and pulled out his phone. 

“What?” said Bruce’s curt voice. 

“Hey, so yeah, you sound busy.”

“I—” there was a sound as of crashing metal, or maybe an explosion— “am. What is it?”

“Oh, yeah, okay, no big, I just had a quick question. Are we dating?”

“Are we—” There was another crash, louder than before, and he could hear Bruce breathing hard. “ _What_?”

“See, I’m at this bar Ollie found, oh my God you would hate this place, it’s a fucking nightmare, everything glows, right, like I went to take a whiz and even the urinals are made out of this purple glowing shit, I could barely relax enough to take care of business, and the mirrors in the—”

“ _Lantern!_ ”

“Sorry, sorry, I can hear that you’re busy, I was really just wondering where we stood on the whole you and me thing. Because I’ve gotta level with you, there is this woman back inside who is—okay, look, if you saw her you would be all over her, and I was thinking she and I might—”

There was an overwhelming crash, and Hal had to hold the phone away from his ear a little bit. “Are you okay?” he asked. He heard a thud, like a body being slammed against something. 

“I’m fine,” Bruce panted. “Now get the hell off this line!”

“Okay I’m gonna take that as a solid whatever, but if you want to revise that just let me—”

“LANTERN!” Bruce shouted in his ear, and then the line went dead. Hal considered calling him back to ask if he needed some help, but thought better of it. It sounded like way more fun than the bar, but Bruce would probably be pissed as all hell if he just showed up. He tucked his phone back in his pocket and pushed back through the crowd at the side door, slowly making his way through the press back to Long and Lovely at the bar. Miraculously, she was still there.

“You okay?” she said.

“I am excellent,” he said. “But listen. I probably need to head home. Got an early morning thing I have to get to.”

“Too bad,” she said, with a glance up and down him that made his insides melt a little. 

“Yeah,” he said. “You know how it is.”

“I do,” she said, with another delicious smile. “Well, you take care of yourself.”

“Yeah,” he said ruefully. “You too.” 

He ducked out not too long after that, because he figured Ollie was several glowing drinks past noticing one way or the other. He didn’t take a cab home, though he could have; he walked the whole way instead. He had maybe had more of those purple drinks than he thought, because his head was spinning by the time he made it to his apartment and fell across the bed. He tried to turn himself the right way, but it didn’t really work; the room kept spinning the other direction. 

He woke to sunlight striping his body, and a rough hand on his shoulder. It was making the whole room spin. He tried to ask the hand to stop. Or maybe he just mumbled. The hand shook him again.

“Oh my God, _what_ ,” Hal groaned.

“Take a look at this.”

Hal tried to squint. Bruce was sitting on the edge of his bed, holding some indistinguishable something in his hand. “What the fuck are you doing,” Hal sighed. “It’s like six in the morning.”

“It’s noon. And I did try to call, repeatedly.”

“Are you—how did you get in? Did you—did you break into my apartment?”

“Try to concentrate. I took this off a low-level thug last night, and I need the ring to analyze it for me. I’m suspicious about its provenance.”

Hal rubbed at his face and tried to focus. “Yeah, didn’t sound like he was all that low-level. Sounded like you were on the ropes there. I shoulda come rescued you.”

“Analyze,” Bruce said, shoving the hunk of metal into his face. For some reason the room hadn’t stopped spinning. Bruce wasn’t coming into any better focus, either.

“Yeah, hang on,” Hal said, pushing his hand away. “I—don’t actually feel that great. I must have had—maybe I had more than I thought last night. I need to—”

He stumbled up and barely made it in his bathroom door before he hurled everything in his stomach. Which did not actually turn out to be much of anything; he was retching bile, but couldn’t quite stop. He slumped against the toilet, drained. His legs weren’t quite working.

There was a cool cloth on his face, and water tipped to his lips. He leaned over the toilet and threw that up too. “’M just. . . hung over,” he panted.

“Hal. You’re burning up,” Bruce said, and his voice was the other voice, the one Hal liked better. The one he used in bed, that was softer at the edges. “Come on, let’s get you back in bed. If you’ve infected me with some radioactive xenovirus, I have every intention of taking this out of your hide.”

“Okay,” Hal said. It was hard to make sense of the words, but Bruce’s voice was pleasant to listen to. He collapsed back in bed and let himself drift. Soon there were pills being shoved in his mouth, and he dutifully swallowed whatever Advil Bruce had dug up from under his sofa cushions. 

“I suppose it’s too much to hope that you own a thermometer.”

“I think my downstairs neighbor gave me a meat thermometer for Christmas last year.”

“We’ll call that Plan B. I’m going to give Leslie a call.”

“What?” Hal half-raised up, then collapsed back. “No, you can’t, don’t do that, it’s just. . I have a cold, it’s fine.”

“Hal. You’ve been off-world. Getting you thoroughly checked is a reasonable precaution.”

“The woman.” Hal grabbed at Bruce’s hand, squeezing it hard in his desperation. He struggled to raise up again. “Listen—listen to me. It must have been her. I’ve been poisoned. She infected me, put something in my drink. I knew it.”

“Or, you have the flu and are being melodramatic.”

“I’m going to die,” Hal moaned, and fell back onto his pillow. When he woke again, Leslie Thompkins was standing over him. She looked very funny from this angle.

“I lost consciousness,” Hal murmured. “I’m having a hard time. . . keeping conscious. I’ve got to stay awake, we have to figure out what’s happened to me, I need to. . . I could have—”

“The flu,” Leslie said. She was studying a scanner and not looking at him.

“That can’t be right,” Hal croaked.

“He thinks it’s interplanetary assassins,” Bruce said. 

“You don’t know. People are. . . always trying to kill me. Lots of people.”

“Let’s examine why.”

“Drink this,” Leslie said, handing him some foul concoction. He grimaced and tried to swallow, but gagged instead.

“This is—oh my God, this is horrible, what is this, is it safe? Is it some alien medical potion?”

“Yes, otherwise known as sodium bicarbonate. All right, I’m going to leave you in Bruce’s capable hands for now. There isn’t much I can do, but feel free to call me if your symptoms worsen.”

“Will they?” Hal tried to still the panic in his chest. Or maybe that was the seltzer. “Wait, is it going to get worse? Am I—am I about to die, and you’re not telling me? I want a second opinion, I need to get—get to a hospital, somebody help me, help,” he managed, but only fell back onto the mattress. They were going to let him die here. 

“And I thought Bruce was a terrible patient,” Leslie said. She was packing her bag, she was going to leave him. Abandon him like they abandoned plague victims, to die alone. 

“I’m going to die alone,” he murmured.

“Yes, probably,” Bruce said. “But not today. Lie back down, you overgrown infant.” But his voice was still the other voice, the low gentle one that made Hal remember things. So he did lie back down, and when he opened his eyes the room was spinning marginally less. Bruce was sitting in the corner reading. There was medicine on the table beside his bed. 

“What are you reading?” Hal said. He was a little shocked how weak his voice sounded.

Bruce flipped to the cover. “Air and Space magazine, June 2010 issue. Found it under your bed. This is an article about how airsickness affects crustaceans, and the difficulty this causes in the transport of lobsters.”

The light out the window was late afternoon. Had he been asleep all day? “I’m sorry,” he said. “You don’t need to stay. I’ll be fine. Sorry for my. . . you know.”

Bruce tossed the magazine on the bed. He was doing that thing where he looked at Hal like he was deeply amused. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. I’m completely better now. I’m all well.”

Bruce got up and left, so maybe he had sounded convincing after all. He let his eyes drift shut again. When he opened them, there was a bowl of soup on the table beside him, and Bruce was propping him up with pillows. “You have to eat,” he was saying. “Come on, give it a try. The Zofran ought to be helping with the nausea, but you’re going to dehydrate yourself. Come on, tuck in.”

Hal valiantly took a spoonful. The soup was surprisingly good. “Where did this come from?”

“What do you mean, where did it come from? It came from your kitchen.”

“It did? I don’t have any food in there.”

“Well. It just takes a skilled cook.”

“Wait, you made this?”

“I. . . might have. I also might have called Alfred and had him send soup over.”

“So when you say it came from my kitchen, you mean you heated it up in my kitchen.”

“I still had to find the pan. And the stove settings. Come on, keep eating.”

Hal laughed, another sad weak sound. But the soup really was excellent. He finished nearly the whole bowl, and even drank some of the herbal tea. He leaned back when he was done and let the heaviness take his limbs again. “Don’t fall back asleep yet, one more dose of medicine,” Bruce said, and Hal obediently swallowed his pills and burrowed back under his covers. It was getting dark outside. Bruce turned on some lights, and went back to his magazine. Hal watched him for a few minutes.

“Hey Bruce,” he said.

“Hmm.”

“I didn’t have sex with that woman last night. I just came home.”

“Oh, you mean the one who tried to slip a deadly toxin into your drink?”

“Okay that might have been—I was over-reacting slightly. But my point stands.”

Bruce peered over his magazine at Hal. “I’m not your girlfriend, Jordan. Do what you want.”

“I did.”

Bruce didn’t look away. He appeared not to have an answer to that. Sometimes it seemed like he had an answer to everything. It was nice to see that wasn’t always the case. “Hey Bruce,” he said. “Tell me a story.”

“About what?”

“About what happened with Selina.”

His eyes were back on his magazine at that. “It isn’t a story.”

“Tell it to me anyway. How did you know she didn’t love you?”

“When she slept with Dick and told me all about it.”

“Christ,” Hal said, because he hadn’t really been expecting Bruce to tell him, and hadn’t really expected it to be as bad as that. “Are you for real?”

Bruce shrugged, tossed the magazine aside. “It’s not that surprising, surely. He’s certainly much younger than I am, and far better-looking. Probably a better lay. Nothing wrong with her taste.”

“I guess I’m just. . . surprised Dick would do that.”

“She can be very persuasive. And I don’t imagine he needed much persuading. I never did.”

“She told you about it, huh.”

“Yes. It wasn’t the fact that it happened that told me how she felt, not really. Our relationship had never been what you might call monogamous, and I don’t mistake the needs of the body for something else. It was her pleasure in telling me about it. As though my pain was pleasant to her. Almost. . . amusing. That was the moment of clarity, I suppose.”

“Clarity sucks.”

“Doesn’t it though.” 

“Are you and Dick okay?”

Another half-shrug. “We were never not okay. He doesn’t know that I know. Nothing would be gained by adding to what I am sure is his considerable guilt.”

“That is. . . quite the story. Jesus Christ.”

“Well, as you once pointed out, families are complicated.”

“Yeah. Well. That’s. . . a special kind of complicated.”

“I think I get a story now too.”

“Okay,” Hal said. The medicine was making him loopy, but he wasn’t as catatonic as before. Just pleasantly drifting. 

“What was the family event you missed, that made your brother so angry at you?”

“Oh.” Hal waved his hand. “That. It was stupid. The base where Dad was stationed was dedicating a memorial plaque to him. Big ceremony. We were all supposed to stand there and look solemn and patriotic. You wanna know what I honestly think, I think Jim was mainly pissed I wasn’t going to be there because he wanted the optics of the Air Force dress uniform. It woulda looked nice, to have us standing there, with me in my uniform. Family tradition. He can suck my tit.”

“Nice of the base to honor him that way.”

“Well he was a hero. That’s what you do for heroes, right?”

“But not your hero,” Bruce said, and Hal looked over at him, because he hadn’t meant it to show in his voice like that. 

“Well. Families are. . .”

“Complicated, you’ve said.”

“Yeah. That thing.” Hal yawned. Bruce picked up his magazine again.

"You know what I find interesting,” Bruce said, leafing through it. “Is how difficult it is to make a child not love you. That’s probably not something you’ve been in a position to observe, but I have. Jason, for instance. His mother was an abusive addict who never gave him much in the way of either love or security, but his loyalty to her, his need to believe in her, was nearly unshakeable. I’ve seen it over and over, in all sorts of situations. You generally have to work pretty hard to make your own child un-love you.”

Hal found nothing to say to that. It occurred to him it was maybe the most he’d heard Bruce say at any one time. But Bruce wasn’t looking at him, just thumbing through Air and Space 2010 like it was the most fucking fascinating thing he’d ever read. After a while he got up and re-filled Hal’s mug of tea, which come to think of it was not something he had tasted before—was this some kind of Tibetan hallucinogen Bruce was feeding him, some kind of Buddhist juju? He swallowed it obediently though.

“Get some rest,” Bruce said, and Hal obeyed that too, letting his eyes drift shut once more.

So that was the story of how Bruce nursed him through the worst of the flu. It was not a story anyone would ever believe, probably. _Hey Hal, where you been?_ Ollie might say. _Oh, I got knocked on my ass by the flu for a few days. But it was okay, Bruce was there to feed me hot soup and herbal tea and tell me stories about his personal life._

Yeah, no one was ever going to believe that one. Any more than they would believe that he had been regularly sleeping with Bruce for a while now. 

He woke up the morning of the second day a little more clear-headed, and quite a bit less dizzy. Bruce was nowhere to be seen, but there was a large container of soup on the kitchen counter and a note propped on one of the sofa pillows in the living room. _Had something to attend to in Gotham_ , it said. _Text me if you need anything._

So Hal plopped on the sofa and considered. Bruce had probably had enough of him for a while. The smart thing to do would be to leave the man alone. But the funny thing was, he was beginning to figure out that with Bruce, as long as you just disobeyed your own instincts one hundred percent of the time, you were probably okay. So what the hell, he texted him. 

_Think I’m still contagious?_ he wrote.

 _Forty-eight hours on Tamiflu, you should be fine_ , came the immediate reply. _I don’t think flying is a good idea though._

_Good to know. Because I was thinking that I didn’t really get a chance to say thank you, but I can think of one or two ways._

There was no answer. So it had not been the most artful come-on of his life, but still. _What_ , he wrote. _Maybe you would prefer if I just texted you an address?_

 _I’m not actually anywhere nearby_ , was the eventual reply. _I’m in Hong Kong._

_Hong Kong?? Your note said Gotham?_

_Things took a turn._

Hal laughed out loud. _All right well you got it in the bank when you get back,_ he wrote. _That soup is worth at least three blow jobs right there._

_I think that will only embarrass Alfred._

Hal laughed again. Smart ass. He tossed the phone aside and decided to trade napping on his bed for napping on the sofa. Maybe he would try waking up day after tomorrow, but for now, consciousness was over-rated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lobster transportation article is an actual article in Air and Space magazine, which is also an actual magazine. This is the kind of research I do for my readers.
> 
> Also, and more importantly: the Dick and Selina thing that happened is, in my head, the story [Fucking About Batman](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4199985), a smoking hot thing written by the inimitable (even though I did just imitate her) [StarCity Rebels](http://archiveofourown.org/users/StarCityRebels/pseuds/StarCityRebels).


	5. Chapter 5

“God,” Bruce moaned, as Hal started in on his collarbone. The fingers were digging into his skull. 

“You want my mouth?”

“I want your mouth up here,” Bruce said, and dragged him up for a kiss that was tongues and teeth and the rasp of Bruce’s stubble. “Tell me what you want,” Bruce said into his ear. 

“How ‘bout I show you,” Hal said, reaching across him for the lube on the table. That was the great thing about fucking in the penthouse – all the equipment was always right within reach. Maybe Bruce left those directions with the maids – lube to be left point seven centimeters to the right of the lamp. He pressed the tube into Bruce’s hand, and then Bruce’s thick fingers pressed at his hole, slid inside, pushing, testing, and Hal let his head fall back, let himself sink into it. He had to be careful though, because Bruce’s pleasure-kink meant that when he knew Hal was enjoying something, he would just run with it, and like some fifty-percent of the time when Bruce was opening him, it would start to feel so good that Hal would moan and give himself over to it, and before he knew it Bruce had like four fingers up him and Hal was riding him and streaking himself with cum while he came on that expert hand. So now he tried to stay focused, because one of them had to be eyes on the prize here. Bruce had a definite tendency to wander off goal, in bed. 

The phone at the foot of the bed started buzzing, and Hal kicked it off with his foot. “Don’t stop,” he panted, but then he stopped Bruce with a hand on his wrist, and rolled, positioned himself exactly where he wanted to be, and slid down onto that unbelievable cock, only gasping a little. 

“It’s—fuck,” he managed. Bruce wasn’t thrusting at all, just lying there and letting it be Hal’s show, but this was not actually a position they had tried before. Things felt quite a bit deeper, like this. And Hal was not the most expert at catching rather than pitching.

“Let’s shift,” Bruce said, but Hal locked his thighs and kept him in place.

“No,” he said, more harshly than he had meant to. “Like this.” And he rode Bruce’s cock, rode through the pain, rode it because of the pain. He shut his eyes and let the pain slice at him, tear at him. He dug his fingers into Bruce’s shoulders, hard enough to bruise. This pain had a way of pushing every other pain away. It didn’t stop hurting, all the way to orgasm. It wasn’t like the pain eventually gave way to pleasure – it was the both of them, intertwined. It was probably sick as fuck, but Hal came like a firehose, and when he was done he climbed off Bruce and collapsed. 

He lay there panting and sweat-drenched. That was when he realized Bruce was still lying there, motionless and hard as nails. “You get what you needed?” Bruce said. Hal shut his eyes. 

“Fuck,” he said. “I didn’t—that wasn’t—do you. . .” He wasn’t sure what to say. It was not the way they had been with each other. It was a pretty clear violation of the sort of thing they had been doing in bed together – too rough, and he had held Bruce down, and he had only cared about getting himself off, hadn’t given a shit about Bruce. One more thing he had fucked up today. 

Bruce propped on an elbow and looked at him, and it was the thing he did where it was like he was seeing right through you. But all he did was lift Hal’s hand and rub Hal’s wrist slowly against his face. 

“I’m sorry,” Hal husked. Bruce shook his head, and went back to nuzzling Hal’s wrist. It was like he was tugging Hal back to him, and the arm he was working on was a lifeline, an anchor. _Listen you worthless little shit_ , Jim’s message had begun. He wasn’t really sure how it had ended; he hadn’t read all of it. 

Bruce was nudging him into kissing now, and Hal let it happen, let Bruce’s mouth scour out the bitterness of Jim’s words. _I don’t know why I expected any better from you. Nothing ever changes, does it?_ But Bruce’s kisses were steady and insistent. After a while they were holding each other, kissing, rocking against each other, and Hal slid a hand down to cup Bruce’s balls. Bruce opened his legs to give him access, and Hal rolled them a little so he could get a better grip, and he quietly jerked him like that, just a slow even hand on his cock.

“Hold up,” Hal whispered, and reached over for the lube, to give Bruce a little more slick. Things went faster after that, but Hal kept his eyes on Bruce’s, watched his cues, paid attention to the gasps and quickened breathing and the shake of his limbs. “Agh, _fuck_ ,” Bruce panted, and curled up, gripping at Hal’s arm, and fucking Hal’s hand while he painted it with cum that slopped over his fingers in thick white drippings. Hal bent down and licked at it, flicked his tongue at the head of Bruce’s cock, and Bruce flinched and moaned, so Hal took all of him, cleaning him with his mouth and the flat of his tongue. Bruce gave another shudder of orgasm and subsided, his hand heavy on Hal’s back. Hal rested his head on Bruce’s abdomen, and soon the hand was carding his hair.

“What happened today,” Bruce whispered, and Hal shook his head. After a while he got up and went into the bathroom, picking up his clothes on the way. The second violation of their rules: they always slept over. He knew how distasteful Bruce would find it, him collecting his clothes like this. He shut himself in the bathroom to dress. 

When he came back, Bruce was standing naked by the window, and Hal’s phone was in his hand. A glass of scotch in his other hand, of course. Hal strode over and smacked the phone out of his hand.

“You son of a bitch,” he said. “That is the second time you’ve done that. You fucking bastard.” 

Bruce just sipped his scotch and watched him over the rim of it. “You had no fucking right,” Hal said, his voice shaking. 

“Your swearing is unimaginative.” 

“So is your drinking. I’ll put all the money in my pockets that you’ve knocked back a couple of pills too, am I right? So tell me, what’s your preference – uppers or downers? My guess is downers, right? Because you tell yourself you’re just doing it to sleep. Right, tell me another.”

“Idiot,” Bruce snarled.

“And you’re a drunk,” Hal threw back at him. “A fucking pathetic drunk,” he said, and this time he smacked the drink out of Bruce’s hand, smacked it with all his considerable force. It hit the glass wall, smearing warm brown on the city lights of Gotham, and then he was fighting for air, because Bruce had slammed him so hard into the wall it had knocked the wind out of him, and there was the solid heft of Bruce’s body cutting off his air, crushing him.

“You gonna hit me?” Hal whispered. “That what you’re gonna do?”

Bruce released him like he’d been tased. Blinked like he didn’t remember the last few seconds, and Hal was willing to bet he didn’t. “You don’t know anything about me,” Bruce said, deadly and low.

“I know everything about you,” Hal said, and he reached for his jacket, shrugging it on quickly. “I know everything I need to know.”

And he was striding for the door, heading out to the marble and mirrors of the ridiculous foyer, and no one was trying to stop him.


	6. Chapter 6

So that was that. Fucking around with Bruce had been all kinds of fun, and had definitely taught him all sorts of shit about what he was capable of in bed, and maybe out of it too. Opened doors of his sexuality, blah blah blah. But invasion of his privacy was where he tapped out, not to mention the drinking was a fucking problem. It was all a fucking problem. Sleeping with someone in the League was the biggest fucking problem of all. That shit needed to stop. 

He didn’t think about it again.

He told himself he wasn’t going to think about it again. 

The thing to do was to fuck someone else, and soon. So he took Ollie up on his offer of another bar night – not the awful purple glowing one, but a real bar with minimal hipster presence – and slammed back his drinks and gave off as many ‘available’ vibes as he could. Which might have gotten crossed with his ‘angry and emotionally compromised’ vibes, because even Ollie noticed something was off.

“What’s the matter with you, man?” Ollie leaned into his space to ask. They were at the bar, not a booth, which gave Hal an open side, but with Ollie leaning into him like that he wasn’t going to get much action. Hal grimaced and shifted away.

“Nothing,” Hal said. But that wouldn’t keep Ollie off his back, so he figured a partial truth would do. “I just. . . I’d been seeing someone, and now I’m not,” he offered. Ollie reared back in astonishment.

“What, like _dating_ someone? You?”

“You don’t have to act so fucking surprised,” Hal muttered into his beer.

“I’m not surprised, I’m speechless is what I am. When did she dump you?”

“Why are you assuming that I was dumped? Why couldn’t I be the one who did the dumping?”

“Were you?”

Hal thought about that one. He honestly wasn’t sure. There hadn’t been any conversation about it. But then again, what would there have been to say? “Maybe,” he said, plucking at the label on his beer. “I don’t. . . you know, let’s just not talk about it.”

“Okay,” Ollie said. “Wait, it’s not Carol again, is it?”

“No, it is not Carol again, I am capable of like, forming attachments with new people, you know.”

“Okay, okay, keep your pants on. What was her name?”

“Bruce Wayne,” Hal said, taking another swig off his beer and eyeing the blonde in the corner.

“Fine, asshole, I’m just trying to make conversation,” Ollie said. 

It occurred to him the blonde in the corner looked a hell of a lot like Dinah. Well, newsflash, he was attracted to Dinah, so that made sense. He wondered what Ollie would do if he leaned over and proposed a threesome with the two of them, with him and Dinah. He knew Oliver was pretty deeply unshockable. He might even say yes. Dinah might say yes. He let the fantasy spin out in his head. But it wouldn’t be possible – Ollie would probably be expecting this strictly gung-ho hetero thing, and Hal couldn’t guarantee that. 

_Have you ever had sex with another man that wasn’t in a bathroom stall?_ Bruce had taunted him. Bruce had done nothing but mock him, from first to last. Mock him, and use him. He pushed away the ghost of a memory, of Bruce’s hands gentle in his hair, of Bruce wiping him with a cool cloth when he was sick. What Bruce had been like in bed. Well, he was probably like that with everybody. Hal slammed the rest of the beer and wondered if this was how Bruce felt all the time, or if he no longer even felt drunk any more.

“What?” Hal snapped, but Ollie was just watching him with quiet grave eyes, and Hal realized he had been watching him for a while, and maybe there had been things on his face that shouldn’t have been there.

“Or we could just go home,” Ollie said. 

“I’m here to get laid. You gonna be my wingman, or you gonna be a girl about it?”

“Dude, dial back the misogyny, I’m just trying to be helpful here.”

“I am sick and fucking tired of being called a misogynist,” Hal said, his voice louder than it ought to be. Maybe he had had more beers than he had thought.

“What? When have I ever called you a misogynist?”

“Forget it. Just—forget it.” He shoved his beer away and made his way toward the blonde in the corner.

* * *

He woke in the middle of the night. The woman—Christ, was her name Cynthia? Cindy? Sylvia?—was still sleeping, curled on her side in his bed. He got up and pulled his clothes on and went to the living room. Maybe if he made enough noise she would wake up and go. 

Clarity sucks, he had said to Bruce. He had definitely not been wrong about that one. 

In the dark, a lot of things became clearer than they had been in the light. Uncomfortably so. He went and took a shower, and then he put on clean clothes. He was standing looking at his bed, wondering what to do about the blonde, and if he should leave a note, when he saw the lump of metal on his bedside table. Bruce had left it there, weeks ago—when he had come asking for that provenance analysis, and then Hal had been sick, and they had both forgotten about it. Well, Hal had, at any rate. Quietly he leaned over and pocketed it. 

Some instinct told him Bruce would be in the Cave, though it was three in the morning and he could just as easily have been in Hong Kong or New Delhi or the upstairs bedroom. Hal knew the back entrance to the Cave, and he knew it would admit the Green Lantern. Or he was hoping it still would. But sure enough, the rock wall slid back, and he made his way down the long dark tunnel that only intermittently flickered to life ahead of him. Bruce would have plenty of warning of his coming.

“You were right about this thing,” Hal said, as he emerged into the vast open dark of the Cave itself. Only blue light from his monitors, and Bruce sitting in his chair, cowl pushed back. Hal ascended the stairs and placed the metal fragment on the edge of one of the monitor stations. Bruce didn’t turn around. 

“So yeah, alien all right. Sector Seventeen. I might be able to narrow it down a bit more than that, but if you were worried about some jacked-up thug in the Narrows having access to alien tech, looks like your worries were justified.”

“They generally are,” Bruce murmured. 

“If you can patch into the Watchtower’s database, we can pull up a couple of sector maps, and I can maybe try to pinpoint a little better exactly where we’re talking about.”

Wordlessly, Bruce began typing, sifting through starmaps which flashed and disappeared across the screen. “That one,” Hal said. “There we go.” He hadn’t been down here, working with Bruce, since that time when he had leaned in and said you name the time, you name the place. Hal swallowed against the memory, and located his courage. Bruce still hadn’t turned around to look at him. 

“You gave me a pretty good story,” Hal said. “When I asked you to tell me a story, you gave me a good one. And the thing is, I just realized I didn’t, really. Didn’t give you a story. Mainly it’s because I’m not used to telling this story. Telling any of them. Not used to. . . a lot of things, I guess.”

Bruce had stopped typing. “So my story is about the time I was eleven,” Hal said. “And my dad was beating the shit out of me. That’s not the story, because that’s what he did all the time. You were right about that one, about what it takes for your kid to finally give up on you, because pretty much most of my childhood, I kept thinking that I was just—that I kept fucking up, that I kept doing things wrong, and that’s why it kept happening. I told myself he was a good guy, I just needed to try harder.”

Hal swallowed again. The thing in his throat was making this harder to say than he had calculated. “So this one time, right, he’s whaling on me, using his fists like he did when he got good and cranked, and I look up, and Jim is in the doorway. Watching.”

Bruce swiveled the chair to him. His face impassive. “He’s my older brother,” Hal continued. “Four years older. I always worshipped him. And he’s just standing there, and then. . . then he just walks away. And it’s funny, because all my life up to that point, I tell myself that Jim doesn’t know, right? That what happens between me and Dad, that’s somehow our little secret. And by keeping it secret, I get this idea in my head that I’m protecting them. Protecting Mom and Jim, even Jack. Looking out for them. Because if they knew, they would have to do something about it, and then they would have to see Dad the way I saw Dad, they would have to know the things that I knew.”

Hal was quiet. There wasn’t anything more to the story than that. There wasn’t anything else to tell. It wasn’t much of a story anyway. “So that’s when I knew,” Hal said lightly, “that he had always known. And Mom too. I don’t know how I knew that about her, it’s just one minute I didn’t know it, and the next I did. Like one minute I saw the world one way, and the next, it changed. They knew all the time, I guess. I was just lying to myself because I was a kid.”

Bruce was still saying nothing, but he was watching Hal closely. Hal shrugged. “You asked me why Jim hates me. I have no fucking idea, I guess. Maybe he thought it was my fault. Funny thing is, he was my hero, growing up. Not so much Dad, not even Jack, but Jim. I just wanted to be like him. I used to hate that I didn’t look like him and Jack and Dad, that they looked so much alike and I didn’t.”

He looked up then. “That’s it, that’s the story.”

Bruce nodded then, and frowned into the middle distance like he was thinking about something. Weighing something. “I have something you should see,” he said finally. He started typing again, pulling up another screen that overlaid the star maps. It was squares filled with letters, and at first Hal couldn’t make sense of it, and then he saw the “Blood Genotypes” header.

“You want me to analyze blood from the fragment?” he said. “I’ve scanned this thing three or four times, there’s not a trace of organic material on it.”

“I know,” Bruce said. “This is a genotype map of your family. I have your medical records on file, of course, but it took some digging to get the rest. Do you know enough genetics to read this?”

“I. . . what the hell is this? Bruce, what the hell—why did you—”

“This is a chart of a physical impossibility,” Bruce was saying. “It is physically impossible for your blood type to have resulted from the pairing of your parents’ blood types. There are a limited number of combinations available here, and your brother Jim is one of them, but you are not. The answer to the mystery is this: you never did anything wrong but exist. You were not his son, and he must have known it. And the correct term for a man who beats a child for any reason, much less for a mistake he had nothing to do with, is a son of a bitch. Excuse me, a criminal son of a bitch. As in, the criminal son of a bitch ought to have been in jail. He didn’t deserve a medal, or a plaque. He deserved a jail cell.”

“Why. . . why are you telling me this,” Hal managed.

“Because people deserve answers. They deserve the truth, even if the truth is hard to hear.” 

“How long have you known all this?”

“A while. I got curious, and I did some investigating.”

Hal sat quietly. He couldn’t think of anything to say. When someone dismantled and re-constructed your life for you, there wasn’t much to say to that. “Fucking Christ, Bruce. This is a little worse than going through my phone,” Hal said, after a bit.

“Yes. But I’ve already paid the price for that. I figured you might as well know this.”

“You think I walked out because you read my messages?”

“No.” Bruce was back to adjusting the starmaps, layering them, honing in on the place Hal had pinpointed before. “When I said people deserved the truth, even if it was hard to hear, I wasn’t just talking about you.” He turned back to Hal. “I know the drinking is a problem. I know the pills are a problem. I have been aware for some time.”

“Oh yeah? That why you threw me against a wall, because you were so damn aware?”

“That wasn’t—”

“But why listen to me, right? I’m just the stress relief around here.” 

He got up and kicked at his stool, pacing the stone floor, clenching and unclenching his fists. The blood type thing was still rocketing in his chest. He wasn’t really angry with Bruce, wasn’t really angry with anyone but the one person he couldn’t reach to be angry at any more. Well. That wasn’t entirely true. _She_ had known. She had probably known the whole time, and let that motherfucker do it anyway, because that was the price she was paying for her infidelity. No. She had never been the one to pay the price. Fuck her, fuck them both, fuck every single memory of his childhood which had been nothing but a fucking lie. He knotted his hands behind his neck and tried to get himself under control.

“What the fuck made you think you had a right to do this,” Hal said, hating the shaking in his voice. “What the fuck made you think you had a right to set fire to my whole life like that.”

Bruce wasn’t answering, so he spun back around and looked at him. Bruce was still just sitting there, watching him. “Nothing,” Bruce said. “But if it were me, I would have wanted to know.”

“And who decides that, you? Because I notice how you’re not all about the truth when it comes to Dick, right? How about if I decided that maybe Dick should know about that, how would you feel about me coming into your life and handing out the truth bombs?” 

He gave his stool another kick and sat back down. “I mean, Jesus Christ,” he muttered. They sat there in silence. He thought of the blonde woman—Samantha, that was her name—who was probably still lying in his bed back at his apartment. He hadn’t left a note because he hadn’t known what to say. With any luck she wouldn’t steal his Xbox.

It had never been anything wrong he had done. It hadn’t been anything he had done at all. And his actual father was out there somewhere, possibly. As fucked up as all of them were, they were only half of him. The part of him that had always yearned for something else, that had wanted to be far far away from all of them—there was a reason for that. There was something liberating in finally knowing that reason. Something terrifying as well. And infuriating. And underneath all of that, grief. Grief for all of them—for his father’s frustration and rage and pettiness, for his mother’s helplessness, for the dysfunction they had all been locked in. For the lie that had nestled at the heart of his childhood. 

“I’m not mad at you,” Hal said. 

“I know.”

“You know, you don’t know _everything_.”

“I know that too.”

Hal laughed. “Motherfucker,” he sighed, and they subsided into silence again. 

“Okay,” he said, getting up. “I need to not talk to you for a while. I need. . . I don’t know what the fuck I need. Some air, probably.” He was halfway to the exit when Bruce stopped him.

“Hal,” he said. He hadn’t turned around, and was still staring at the monitor.

“Yeah.”

“’Stress relief’ is not the right word. Was not the right word.”

“Oh okay,” Hal shouted back. “Good to know, great conversation we’re having, this is super important for me to know right now, because I really give a fuck! A vocabulary lesson, this is what you’re handing out right now? You think I give a fuck what words you use?”

“I think you’ve referred to it twice now, so yes, I think the words bother you.”

Hal gripped the rock wall, digging his fingers into it. “Just forget it,” he said. “Just leave me the fuck alone.”

But of course Bruce never left anything alone, never could listen to anyone or anything. Hal could hear his step approaching behind him. He had just wanted air.

“I will leave you alone,” Bruce’s quiet voice said behind him. “We never have to speak again, if you don’t wish it. But you should know two things. I said ‘stress relief,’ because I knew that if I said, you’re all I’ve been thinking about and I can’t get you out of my head, you would have been out that door so damn fast there would have been skid marks. And the other thing is, there was never any list. That’s all.”

And Hal heard him walking away, his boots crunching on the slick stone.

* * *

When he got back home, Samantha was gone. She hadn’t even left a note, but then again, neither had he. He had probably been incomparably shitty in bed. Out of it too, come to think of it. 

He spent the rest of the day catching up on his flight log, papers strewn around his kitchen table – meaningless work that required his brain to focus so it could stop thinking about all the other things that were crowding around, trying to get in. He had had next to no sleep, on top of it. And on top of that it was belatedly occurring to him he had ditched Ollie at the bar last night like a complete and utter dickhead. So that was one more relationship he had managed to fuck up, and here it was not even noon. 

It was over his fifth cup of coffee, along about lunchtime, that another and even stranger thing occurred to him: it occurred to him that in fact, he and Bruce might have been having a fight. A fight, like people in relationships had fights. Because when you got that close to another person, there would be claws and bite marks, because humans were dangerous. This human in particular. 

He wasn’t sure he had ever been in a fight before.

Actually, he wasn’t sure he had ever been in a relationship before, and wasn’t that the wake-up call. Nothing had ever felt like this, like his insides were getting ripped out and re-arranged. Why would it feel like this? Hal tugged out his phone and stared at it. He read back through all his texts from Bruce, everything in the last few months. It was like he was seeing it all for the first time, like blinders had fallen from his eyes or something. He was a motherfucking idiot. Idiot, Bruce had called him, and he wasn’t wrong. The hell of it was, he wasn’t wrong. 

He had to punch something, or the thing clawing his insides would eat him alive. He wanted to throw the phone across the room until it shattered, wanted to meet himself in the street three months ago and punch himself in the face, wanted to hurl himself against a wall and yell _pay attention you sorry motherfucker_ in his own face. Pay attention, before you lose the thing you never knew you were waiting for. 

He had lost, because he had failed to do the thing he screamed at new Corps recruits about every day of the week: pay attention to your surroundings. 

But there was another thing he screamed at new recruits about too. Last time he was off-world, this green recruit out of Epsilon sector, what the hell her name was he couldn’t remember. But he had been helping Kilowogg run an armed training exercise, no rings allowed, and then all of a sudden this girl had stopped firing, and Hal had been in her face. _Why the hell did you stop firing?_ he had yelled. _We lost_ , she had said, looking around like she was somehow confused. _No_ , he had said, smacking the weapon out of her hand. _You’re alive. You know when you stop firing? When you're dead. That's how you know you fucking lost. Pick up that weapon and get back in there, recruit._

There was something to be said for taking your own advice. 

So he picked up his phone and composed a text. He didn’t even have to think about what he would say, because he knew exactly. He had one shot, and he wasn’t going to miss. Not this time.

 _964 West Zamorra Boulevard_ , he wrote. _Apartment 3C. Ten PM._

He set the phone aside and went to make himself some more coffee. He tried not to look at his phone. Tried not to think about it. He went back to his flight logs, tried to make his brain focus. The minutes creeped by, and the minutes became an hour. An hour and fifteen. An hour and thirty. When exactly had he turned into a teenage girl staring at his phone? One hour and forty-seven minutes later, he got an answering ping.

_Is this the address where you are currently being held hostage, and you require rescue?_

Hal grinned. _Nope_ , he texted back. _I figure it’s my turn to name the time and the place._

_Oh is that so._

_That’s so_ , he wrote.

_Nothing I can do about it then._

_I mean, I can move down the list, no problem._

Another pause. Bruce still hadn’t said yes, exactly. What would yes even look like? He was a little unsure what he should do if Bruce left it at that, just left him hanging there. The pause was getting longer. And then another ping.

_As someone I know once said, you are such a complete prick._

Hal laughed aloud. So that’s what yes looked like. That’s what yes was always going to look like, for them. Had he really expected anything different? So many possible ways to respond here. In the end he just went with a dick emoji from the dirty app Ollie had downloaded to his phone. You could never go wrong with a classic. 

But he did stick a winkie-face on it, for that extra something special.


	7. Chapter 7

Had he not been a bit bored at the office one day, he might have missed it entirely.

“What’s this?” Bruce said with a scowl, as Linda deposited the next stack of folders on his desk. “I distinctly remember saying I was finished with work today.”

“Yes, sir. But since it’s ten-thirty in the morning, I chalked that up to your dry sense of humor.”

“I don’t recall having a sense of humor,” he said, plucking the top folder off the formidable stack. “Lucius apparently does, however.”

“Mr. Fox says to remind you that he is joining you for lunch.”

“I’m heading home before lunch,” he said, absently leafing through the recent mergers and acquisitions. And then he saw it.

“Mr. Fox said you might say that, sir. In which case he said to remind you that he would be joining you for lunch, and it is completely your choice if lunch happens at Chez Edouard or your kitchen table, but it is happening. His words, sir, not mine.”

“I don’t suppose I could feign illness?”

“That might require me to corroborate your story, sir. I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to lie.”

“No, of course not,” he said, flipping to the next page of the folder and frowning. “Linda, have you had a raise recently?”

“Not since the last time you needed to evade a luncheon engagement. Shall I clear this other stack then?”

“Ah. . . just leave those. I haven’t quite finished with them yet.”

The arch of Linda’s brow told him what she thought about that pleasant little fiction, but he was too absorbed in what he was studying to spar wth Linda, which never ended well for him anyway. The door shut behind her, and he picked up the phone and dialed Lucius.

“Yes, sir,” said Lucius’ grave voice. Lucius always sounded like he was attending a heart transplant, and it wasn’t going particularly well.

“Lucius, I’m looking through the stack of recent acquisitions. What can you tell me about this Bishop Imports? Based in Coast City?”

“Bishop?” He sounded surprised. “Pretty much nothing. It was part of a bulk acquisition deal. Couldn’t tell you the first thing about it, really.”

“Listen, will you run the financials on it for me? Give me everything you can dig up, last five fiscal years. I’ll also need personnel files on all major shareholders, including deep background.”

“Certainly,” said Lucius, “I’m happy to have someone in my office have something for you in the next few days or so, if—”

“No. I need it by the end of today, and I need it to be you. I need this kept under wraps, if you don’t mind. Sorry to ask, but I wouldn’t if it wasn’t important.”

“Of course, sir. But may I ask—is this company of particular interest to Bruce Wayne, or to. . . someone else?”

“I’m not sure,” he prevaricated. “Thank you, Lucius. You’ll probably need to work through lunch. Shall I have Chez Edouard send something over for you?”

“Oh no you don’t, sir. You and I will re-schedule for dinner.”

“That actually won’t—”

“See you at seven,” Lucius said, and clicked off. Bruce hung up the phone, and stared at it for a second. 

“I actually run this company,” he said aloud to no one in particular. 

By three in the afternoon, Lucius had the completed financials sent over for him, along with the personnel files and background. Bruce flipped to those immediately. It was always possible he had been wrong. Bishop was a common enough name. But Bishop had also been Martin Jordan’s callsign, and Hal had said his brother was in the import/export business, and when he had opened his file and seen that name, something in Bruce had sat up and taken notice.

He was not, of course, wrong. 

There was the face he had been looking for: narrower than his brother’s, fair-skinned and light-eyed instead of Hal’s warm browns, but the resemblance was still there. Bruce studied the head shot. He fancied a certain smugness about the eyes, a self-satisfied air. He flipped to the financials. Nothing here to warrant all that smugness—Bishop Imports did all right, but not as well as might be expected. Not as well as those house payments probably required. It looked like a very nice house.

He tossed the folder on his desk and thought. He swiveled his chair out to the wide windows that looked over Gotham’s gray-streaked skyline, and thought some more. No harm in doing some investigating, after all. He reached for the phone. “Lucius,” he said. “I need you to set up a meeting for me.”

* * *

He told himself he was just curious. The meeting would be at Wayne Tower, in the plushest possible conference room. Wayne Enterprises would pay plane fares, and no expense would be spared. There would be a car at the airport, and a hotel suite downtown. All of which meant that by the time Jim Jordan walked into his conference room, the smug smile was firmly in place, and he appeared convinced his ship had come in.

“Bruce Wayne,” Bruce said, extending his most dazzling smile along with his hand. Jim’s grip was annoyingly firm, in the manly one-up-manship way. His grin was as big as Bruce’s.

“Mr. Wayne,” he said. “It’s truly a pleasure.”

“Bruce, please,” he said, waving Jim and his partners to their seats. He made sure to seat himself near Jim at the table, and made small talk with Jim alone during all the introductions. “I hope you don’t mind all this rigmarole,” he said to Jim. “We acquire a lot of companies, but yours really looks like something special. I’m hoping we can do some business together.”

“Oh, believe me, I don’t mind,” Jim said, and Bruce could practically see his chest swell, and probably other things too. “It would be an honor to do business with Wayne Enterprises. Any contribution my company can make, however small, would be—it would be a huge asset to our—”

“Good, good,” Bruce said absently, and he let Lucius drone out the reading of the financial disclosures and all the things that Jim Jordan was probably too stupid to know were completely unnecessary, along with this whole pointless sham of a meeting, but a Bentley at the airport and a thousand-dollar-a-night hotel had a way of blinding men like Jordan to realities. 

“Tell you what,” Bruce murmured, leaning closer. “Why don’t you and I cut out of here early, and go have dinner someplace where we can talk nuts and bolts?”

“That sounds excellent,” Jordan said, his face practically purpling with pleasure. 

“Good, dinner at the Edgeworth it is,” he said, and turned back to pretend to listen to Lucius, whose veiled curious glances Bruce avoided.

Dinner with Jim Jordan was everything he had hoped it would be—or rather, everything he had dreaded it would be too. The man required remarkably little drawing out to boast about anything and everything, and he clearly had an exalted view of his company, and his own role in it. It wasn’t that it was such a bad little operation, overall; he had competent people running it, and Jordan himself appeared to be smart enough to stay out of their way, while taking all the credit. 

“So your father must have been in business, too, for you to have such a knack for it?” Bruce said, pouring out some more Cointreau. 

“Who, my father? Oh no, he was never one for sitting behind a desk. He was a military man, trained as a test pilot.”

“Is that so,” Bruce said, eyes widening. “A man of action, eh? Well, my hat’s off to him. You know, I fancy myself a bit of a pilot – got my license a few years back and everything. Mainly I use it for runs to the Cape, that sort of thing, but if you’re up for a bit of flying, and if you don’t mind staying in town a few days, what say I take us up tomorrow? That is, unless you have something else planned?”

“Oh, I—no, I think I could do that. Sure I could, you bet I could.”

“Excellent! And I tell you what,” Bruce said, lowering his voice conspiratorially, “I might be able to chase us up some company too, if you know what I mean. The city is gearing up for Fashion Week, and some of my favorite models are in town. You wouldn’t be averse to a little socializing, I take it?”

“Bring it on,” Jordan said, with a rapacious leer. The wedding ring he was wearing was clearly not going to get in his way, and Bruce swallowed his distaste with another finger of Cointreau. He would have to go easy on that; having been off alcohol for some time meant that it was singing in his veins tonight, and his capacity was sharply reduced. Well, some things were worth it. 

The dinner was largely effortless, since Jordan was only too happy to talk about himself all the time, and required only minimal encouragement. He got more animated as the dinner (and the consumption of liquor) progressed, and Bruce got him to politics with barely any nudging at all.

“I’ll tell you what else is going to change,” Jordan said, pointing at him with the end of his dinner knife. “All these regulations. A man can barely make a living for his family these days, what with the way the government chokes him. Trump’s going to change all that. Yes sir, the world is taking a turn for the better.”

“Hear hear,” Bruce said. “I for one am tired of being told that making money is bad, that capitalism is bad. We are the engine of this country.”

“Yes! And every sniveling socialist can move to Denmark, for all I care. I mean listen,” he said, leaning in and lowering his voice. “I have nothing against immigrants. But the pendulum has swung too far the other direction, you get me? If you’re a white man in this country, particularly a white man with some money in his pocket, well brother, you’ve had it rough the last ten years or so, am I right? But the tide is turning now.”

“That it is,” Bruce said, and he lifted his glass. “To business.”

“To business,” Jordan echoed heartily, and Bruce watched him slice into the remains of his steak with gusto. 

“Excuse me for a minute,” Bruce said, and he ducked out to the lobby, where he pulled out his phone. He positioned himself in a quiet corner, behind a potted palm, with an excellent view of sightlines as well as the marble fountain.

“Hey,” said the answering voice, and the warmth behind it was like a soothing balm, after the horrors of this dinner. “What’s up?” 

“Nothing much,” Bruce said. “Business dinner. You finishing up?”

“Yep, busy day. Behind on my logs too.”

“Mm.”

“You all right?”

“Yes. Everything’s fine. I—” There was no way to express why he had really made the call. It had just been a little much, sitting across from someone wearing a face that in dim light reminded him far too much of another face. It was like Jim Jordan was some poorly written caricature, and he had needed to be reminded of reality.

“Just tired, I suppose,” was all he said. “Listen, I might be out of pocket for the next few days. Some things I need to take care of, a little bit of travel.”

“Uh huh. You gonna tell me what’s wrong when you get back?”

“I’ll try. I really just wanted to hear your voice,” he said.

“You got my voice, and a whole lot else. Babe. You watch your sweet ass out there, all right?”

“I will. Same to you.”

“Ooh, business voice, I like it. It’s getting me hot already.”

Bruce sighed. “Why must you destroy every moment?”

“Because it’s what I do. I am the destroyer. All right, I gotta get back to it. Go do a job,” Hal said, and clicked off. Bruce slipped the phone back in his breast pocket. 

“I intend to,” he murmured.

* * *

The charming of Jim Jordan was not something that required a whole weekend of his time, but in truth that hadn’t been his real purpose. His real purpose had been to try to see who the man was, to see behind whatever smoke and mirrors his bluster threw up. Maybe he had been hoping to glimpse something of Hal, in observing his brother so closely. But the more time he spent around the man, the less of Hal he saw. By the end of the weekend, he was astonished that he had ever seen any resemblance at all.

It wasn’t that the man was stupid, in the least. He was just consistently self-serving, and occasionally venal. He wasn’t terribly interesting, or particularly evil. He was banal, and the borders of his life were the borders of his self-interest. Like most such people, he assumed everyone around him was like that too, which made Bruce’s part easy to play, at least. 

They stayed at the house on the Cape owned by Wayne Enterprises for occasions such as this one. It would have been a pleasant enough weekend, with the right company. The worst of it was, there was really no help for the drinking. He couldn’t mask or pretend; he had to be in it with him. It had been quite a few months since he had been drinking at this level, but it was amazing what the body remembered. The muscle memory of the born alcoholic. Though alcoholic hadn’t been the word Hal had used, of course. 

The models had been easy enough to find, and the first night at the Cape, he had had to listen to the muffled bangs and knockings of Jim Jordan’s no doubt clumsy threesome. By that time Jordan was too drunk to wonder why Bruce was demurring, or handing his date off to Jim so readily. Bruce poured himself some more whisky and sat out on the balcony, watching the ocean, enjoying his cigarette. He considered calling Hal again, but that might arouse suspicion. If he wasn’t careful, he might earn himself a visit not from Hal but from the Green Lantern, who would have no trouble locating him. He tipped his head back and relished his cigarette, blowing a plume of smoke. Possibly he was very, very drunk.

He imagined that conversation with Hal. Calling him right now.

 _I’m drunk_ , he would say. _Possibly very drunk._

 _Okay_ , Hal would say. He could imagine the tightness of his voice. The disappointment in it. 

It hadn’t been that long ago, just a few months. He had awakened in the middle of the night, the way he always did. Reached for the glass on the bedside table, with his half-empty scotch. A hand had closed on his. Not gripping him hard. Just resting there. He hadn’t said anything. They had just been lying there, looking at each other. He couldn’t look away from Hal’s eyes. 

In the end, he had withdrawn his hand from the glass, and Hal had folded him back in his arms. Held him there. They hadn’t talked about it, then or ever. Hal wouldn’t say _do this for me_. Bruce wouldn’t say, _I’m not sure I can do this_. It was an unspoken agreement, like almost everything in their life together.

The glass door slid back and he heard a light step onto the porch. “You want should come join?” Her lilting voice was very pleasant. Polish, but with a hint of something else. Possibly her father was Croatian. 

“No thank you,” he said, taking another contemplative drag of his cigarette.

“All right,” she said easily. But she came and sat on the chaise beside him. She was wearing a satin bathrobe plucked from one of the upstairs bathrooms, and it fell open as she moved. Quite a bit open. He noted with dispassion the stirring of lust in his body, as though from a great distance. It would be a matter of moments to hoist her against the wall of the porch and sink into her body, ride that doubtlessly glorious cunt until he came. He could make her come too. Probably several times. He took another drag off his cigarette and regarded the ocean view.

 _There’s something I need to tell you_ , Hal had said. 

_No you don’t._

__

__

_Yeah, I kinda do._

Hal had spared him the details, of course. That was fine; Bruce did an excellent job painting those in his head. He had listened to Hal’s halting narrative, about the woman in the bar, the woman who had still been in his bed that night he had come to the Cave, and when he was done Bruce had simply nodded. 

_I don’t require that kind of accounting_ , was all Bruce had said.

_Yeah, I get that. But I do._

So Bruce had not offered further comment. Hal had not placed any similar demands on him; had never said, these are the parameters of our relationship. That was not the way they were with each other. Next to him, the woman shrugged off her robe and stretched out, naked and breathtakingly flawless. “You are very sure?” she said.

“I’m good, thank you,” he said. 

“You are married?”

He thought about that one. “More or less,” he said. She arched a perfect brow.

“So you are more, and he is less,” she said, with a glance toward the house. 

He barked a laugh. “Accurately put,” he said, and she laughed too. Her laugh was as pleasant as her voice. She shut her eyes in evident enjoyment of the warm night air. 

“But he has beautiful house,” she said.

He did not correct her. He ought to have told her he was gay, instead of married. But she had already seen his appreciative gaze, so gay might have been a hard sell. There was also his reputation for sleeping with lots of women. Gay was technically untrue, but so was married, of course—he wasn’t, and couldn’t afford to be. Bruce Wayne’s marriage would be a matter of public record, and that was the kind of scrutiny that would put both their identities at risk. 

“I think I sleep out here,” the lovely model said, burrowing more comfortably into the pillows of the chaise. He went into the house and fetched her a blanket, but she was already asleep by the time he returned. He ought not to have inflicted Jim Jordan on any woman. In the morning, he would see what Wayne Enterprises could do for her, starting with a note of apology.

He flew them all back to Gotham the next day, late enough for Jordan to sleep off the hangover, and took him to dinner again, and then to a bar—not a lush oak-paneled place, but an actual bar, with frothy mugs of beer and sports memorabilia on the walls. It was loud, which gave them nice cover. Bruce found a booth near the back that was quiet, and he kept the beers coming, and he kept Jordan talking. The man was firmly convinced by now that Bruce was his long-lost best friend, and for a while—for most of the evening, actually—Bruce considered leaving it at that. He had seen what he needed to see. No purpose would be served by anything else. He was a cat that had become infinitely bored with his mouse, and as he sat at the cozy lamplit table that smelled of bourbon and old beer, he let his eyes stray around the bar, wondering how soon he might gracefully rid himself of Jordan’s presence.

“It’s that their fathers don’t give them any values, is the problem,” Jordan was earnestly expostulating, and Bruce tuned back in.

“Hm?”

“You know. Kids like that,” he said, with a wave at the TV. Bruce glanced over his shoulder at the tail end of the news clip. “Thugs. And yeah, I sound like I’m seventy, right? But it does come down to values. That’s another thing I bet you and I have in common – I bet your old man taught you values, same as mine.”

Bruce had to take a careful sip of his beer, at the man’s easy equation of Thomas Wayne with Martin Jordan. “Oh that he did,” he said. “Your father was military, so he must have been pretty strict, eh?”

“Oh, sure. I mean, Dad had his moments. But if you listened, if you followed the rules, if you straightened up—then you always knew exactly where you stood. He was a great man, a true American hero.”

Bruce studied the table. “Mm,” he said. “Well, you were lucky. You had your father while you were growing up, and you also had your family. You must have had lots of brothers and sisters, big military family, the whole nine yards?”

Jordan shrugged. “Well, not all that big. There were three of us boys, so that house sure felt small enough, I’ll tell you that.”

Bruce laughed. “I’ll bet it did at that. You must have tales of your adventures when the three of you were young.”

“Well, some. I don’t mind saying I was the instigator for a lot of the mischief. You know what they say about the middle child.”

Bruce laughed even louder. “So I hear, so I hear. He must have been proud of all three of you.”

“Oh, I think he was, in his way. Of most of us, anyway. My older brother Jack, he’s D.A. out in Coast City.”

“A legal man, you don’t say? That’s quite the job, district attorney. No wonder your old man was proud. What about your younger brother?”

“Oh.” Jordan gave an airy wave. “A fuck-up, as you might figure. Every family’s got one.”

“Not yours, surely.”

“Oh, you better believe it. Even a dad like mine couldn’t do anything with a fuck-up like that. Some people, no matter how much you do for them, they just can’t get it together, you know? Bad seeds crop up everywhere. I mean, you know how it is, right?”

“Mm,” Bruce said. 

“So.” Jordan slid his beer out of the way. “When do we get to talk some business? I’ve been thinking all weekend about ways to expand Bishop Imports. With your capital, and my West Coast network, the sky’s the limit, I’m telling you. I mean, can you imagine it?” 

“I can imagine a lot. A businessman has to have a healthy imagination, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Absolutely. Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. We need to think big here. No more of this nickel and dime shit, right?”

“The thing is this, Jim. I try to exercise my imagination, in business as in life, whenever I can. And there’s something I’ve been imagining a lot in the last few days. Do you want me to tell you about what I’m imagining?”

“Absolutely. Paint the picture for me, big guy.” 

He wondered if Jordan intended the reference to the width of his shoulders, or the size of his bank account. He leaned in closer. “I’m imagining a fifteen-year-old boy,” Bruce said. “A boy who is adored by his father, and who adores his hero father in turn. A boy with everything going for him—good looks, athleticism, a loving home life.”

Jordan was frowning a little bit, but nodding. “Okay,” he said.

“And I’m trying to imagine what that boy feels, when he sees his younger brother. Younger than him by four years. It’s an interesting age gap. He would have been in first grade when his younger brother is just toddling around. That little brother would grow up to worship him, to follow him around everywhere—would give anything, of course, to be like him. I’m trying to imagine what such a boy might feel, the day he first sees their father beating his little brother. He might be confused at first. He might wonder what was happening, how such a thing could be.”

Jordan had gone paler than pale. He was not moving, was barely breathing. “I’m trying to imagine,” Bruce continued, “what it would feel like to be that boy, and to walk away. To turn his back on the suffering of someone younger and more vulnerable, because to acknowledge that suffering, much less to stand against it in some way, would be to give up all the advantages and security and yes, possibly love, he had known from the rest of his family. So he walks away. What is it like, to be a boy like that? To grow up faced with those kinds of choices? What would it make you into?”

Jordan licked his lips. He had begun to breathe fast. “You—you don’t—” he whispered.

“And here’s the thing, Jim,” he said. His voice was low now, and quiet. “Children make bad choices all the time. The bad choices and terrible things we do when we are ten, or fifteen, or even eighteen—they don’t define us. What defines us, what makes us into men, is what we do with those choices as adults. I can imagine that such a boy might grow up to realize what a terrible thing he had participated in for so long, and might say to his brother, I’m sorry. I did an unforgivable thing, because I was afraid, and because I was young. He might, I imagine, spend the rest of his life trying to adequately express that remorse. He might make himself into the kind of man who looked always for the suffering of others, to see if he could better it in some way. He might become a man filled with deep compassion, a compassion born from awareness of his own failings. I think that would be a good man to know.”

Bruce leaned back. “But that’s not the man you chose to become, is it?” 

Jordan was white to the lips, but he seemed to have recovered the power of speech. “I don’t know how he got to you,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t know what lies he’s told you. But you know fuck-all about my family, and fuck-all about my shit of a brother. But that’s all it is, all of it—lies. Hal’s nothing but a motherfucking liar, and always has been.”

Bruce entertained the fleeting fantasy of closing his fingers on Jim Jordan’s smug white throat, squeezing the life out until he writhed and gasped for air and his eyes ran blood. The casual pleasure of it. “But come on,” Jim was saying, the desperation high in his voice. “No matter what he fed you, you can’t let this get in the way of—Christ, come on, this is business, all right, we have to—”

“Here’s the business you and I will be doing,” Bruce said. “I’m going to dismantle your company, piece by piece. I’m going to carve it into small unrecognizable bits. I’m going to destroy everything you’ve built. Not because I have to, particularly. Just because I want to, and because I can. And everyone who works for you will be offered a job working for Wayne Enterprises, at a substantial salary increase. Or they can choose to decline my offer, in which case they will be handed a generous severance package carved from what’s left of your revenue holdings.”

“You—you can’t—”

“Everyone associated with Bishop Imports will benefit substantially,” Bruce said, “everyone, that is, except you. You get nothing, except financially ruined. But because I don’t wish to punish those whose misfortune it is to be related to you, I’m going to establish a trust for your wife and your children, which will be ironclad and untouchable by you. They will be well taken care of. You, on the other hand, are going to starve.”

“You cold-blooded son of a bitch,” Jordan managed to gasp out, and Bruce smiled. 

“That I am,” he said. “Almost as cold-blooded as you.” There were some soggy mozzarella sticks left from earlier, and he idly swirled one in the sauce, bit into it. “You know, I thought about not doing this, I really did. But what can I say, you decided me.”

“You’re a lunatic,” Jordan spat. “You’ve got some kind of mental disorder.”

“Oh, several. So keep that in mind when I tell you that Hal Jordan is my friend. And if you ever again open your filthy pathetic mouth to call him a liar, or address him in any way that is not courteous and deeply respectful, than I will become far more creative—far more imaginative, if you will—in my vengeance. Trust me on this one, I have a really interesting imagination.”

He wiped his fingers of the mozzarella grease, and reached for his coat. For the first time since the weekend began, he was actually having a good time. Jordan however had come back to life, his narrow eyes darting around the bar, to the exit, to Bruce, back again. “I figured it out,” he finally said, his voice hard. “Jack told me once, and I didn’t believe it. He told me Hal was a fucking faggot, that he had caught him once. That’s it, isn’t it. He’s been sucking your cock, hasn’t he. How much do you pay him to suck your psychopathic cock?”

Bruce sighed. “Well, thanks for making this easier, I suppose.” He stood, and tossed a fifty on the table. “We’ll just say this round is on me, with a little extra thrown in for cabfare.” He allowed himself one hearty backslap of the other man. 

“Take care of yourself, Jimbo,” he said. “And remember: I’ll be watching.” 

He stopped at the bar on the way out the door, to leave a twenty there. A man like Jordan couldn’t be trusted to tip. 

 


	8. Chapter 8

He didn’t spare a thought for Jim Jordan, or for Bishop Imports, after that. He let Lucius handle the details of the dismantling, and all the financial arrangements. And in truth, Batman had enough to keep him busy these days, and Wayne Enterprises business did not intrude overmuch on his life. It tended to be like that; he would immerse himself in the business for a few days or weeks at a time, and then Batman would subsume all his time, and he would entirely absent himself from the office. Lucius was used to the rhythms of it, and could cover for him easily enough.

Of course, when he did finally re-emerge into the business world again, it meant there were invariably several unpleasant days of catching up on e-mails, sifting through papers, and reading through endlessly tedious reports. Lucius did his best to condense what he could, Bruce knew, but there was no getting around the hard work of it. Although these days it felt like a bit of a break, to read through financials. Batman’s work was not going so well, and recent investigations had not yielded the fruit he had hoped.

Which was why he sat at the table in the penthouse one Thursday night, sipping his coffee and leafing through yet another stack of reports while Hal rummaged in the kitchen for utensils for their take-out. He was also humming a bit to himself, which Bruce found amusing, and he listened with half an ear. It was always possible to piece together what Hal had been listening to in the cockpit that day, based on what he was humming that night. Evidently quite a bit of Jagger.

“So are we just supposed to eat on top of those stacks of papers, or what?” Hal called from the kitchen.

“Hmm?”

“Stop saying hmm when you know what I said. You’ve got a desk in the other room with like nine yards of real estate, and you never put jack shit on it.”

“Better light in here,” he said, idly flipping to the next page. 

“You can’t honestly be as interested in that as you’re pretending to be.”

“I’m really just pretending not to listen to you.” 

“Okay, how about you not listen to this, then. I need to run some diagnostics on the Javelin. She’s slowing on re-entry, and I need to find out why, so I thought I might take her out for a spin tomorrow, let her burn it off a bit.”

“Mm,” Bruce said.

“But don’t you mind me, I’ll just be over here making your dinner.”

“It’s take-out,” he murmured. 

“Yeah, but I carried it on my back all the way over from that place on 51st,” he said. “So what’s up in Wayne’s World this week?”

“Oil shipments,” Bruce said. “A substantial percentage of which have been impounded and are sitting on the docks right now because there has been an accounting error with the import tax. Whose error, is the question, of course.”

“Imports, huh. I ever tell you that’s what Jim does?” 

“Hm?” 

“Yeah, couldn’t tell you any more than that, though. Sounds about as boring as he is.” Hal was licking duck sauce off his fingers and leaning in the doorway. “So in all the import stuff you guys do, you ever run across a company called Bishop Imports?”

Bruce took another sip of coffee. “Don’t think so,” he said evenly. “But Lucius would know better than I do.” 

He flipped to the next page of his report. There was silence. Hal was still standing there, leaning in the doorway, and his gaze was level. “So that’s what that looks like,” he said.

“That’s what what looks like?”

“The lie to my face.”

Bruce set his coffee down, very carefully. “Hal—” he began.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “This is not the part where you are talking.” The quietness, the stillness of Hal’s voice was what he had not been prepared for. He could feel the ground shifting underneath him, like a miscalculation in the middle of hand-to-hand, and he was searching for his footing, but couldn’t find it. 

“Do you have any fucking idea,” Hal said, “what you just did? I mean, I know what you believe—you believe that you are the avenging fucking finger of God almighty. You believe that you served out justice where it was due.”

“That’s exactly what I did,” Bruce snapped. “I gave the best of all possible justice to someone who—”

“Here’s where you shut up, because I’m going to tell you what you actually did. You listening now? Because what you did was, you fucked with my family.”

Still the quietness, and still he had not moved from the doorway. “I gave Jim Jordan exactly what he deserved,” Bruce said, and his voice was the one getting louder, angrier. “Exactly what he should have had coming to him years ago.”

“I see,” Hal said. “And that was for you to decide, was it?”

“I’m the only person who could have delivered that kind of justice. No one else was in a position to do what I did. And if you expect me to say that I’m sorry, you’re going to have quite a wait.”

“Susan called me this afternoon,” Hal said. “That’s his wife, in case you cared to know her name. She wanted me to know they’re getting a divorce. She’s divorcing him. Jim’s been in a tailspin since he lost his company, she was telling me. Drinks all the time, can barely leave the house. Things have been bad. What the hell happened, I said. And then she started telling me about Wayne Enterprises dismantling his company. My sister-in-law was crying to me on the phone about what happened to the man she used to know, and I’m sitting there trying to figure out what to tell her, this woman whose whole life has just been turned upside down.”

“She’s better off,” Bruce said. 

“Yeah, maybe so. But that was her decision to make, asshole, not yours. Do you have—Jesus Christ, do you have any conception of what has happened here, of what you’ve done? Because you decided you knew what was best, Jim’s kids grow up without their father around. And don’t you open your fucking mouth and tell me they’re better off.”

“Susan and the kids have plenty of money to—”

“Because _money_ fixes every fucking thing? Do you—are you even _listening_ to the shit coming out of your mouth right now, do you even believe it? You break this man apart, never stopping to think how many lives depend on him remaining whole, and you think you can throw some money at it, and it will be fixed?”

“I did the right thing,” Bruce said.

“No, you did the thing _you_ wanted to do. You decided that you knew what was best for me, and for everyone else, like you always do.”

“Hal—”

“You decided that because I hadn’t settled my score with Jim, it must mean that I was incapable of it, or didn’t know how to. You think I couldn’t square my account with my own brother? Did it ever occur to you that if I left a thing, it was maybe because I _wanted_ it left? That maybe that was my _right_ , if I decided my brother should be left alone?”

“Half-brother,” Bruce murmured.

Hal’s eyes went flinty. “You son of a bitch. You stay the fuck away from me, and you stay the fuck away from my family.” He spun on his heel, and Bruce heard his quick step, heard the pause while he gathered his jacket, heard the slam of the penthouse door. Not once had Hal yelled. Not once had Hal spoken in anything but that implacable voice. 

He stood there for quite some time after Hal left, trying to still the crashing thud of his chest, hearing nothing but the sound of Hal’s footsteps as he walked out. Knowing he would hear them, over and over, for maybe the rest of his life.   
 


	9. Chapter 9

The day after his disastrous hook-up with Samantha at the bar—the day after he and Bruce had had it out in the Cave, and had what only in hindsight he recognized as a fight, like normal people in a normal relationship had, to the degree that anything involving the two of them could ever be called normal—the day after he had texted Bruce and discovered that what do you know, they were actually okay, were going to be okay, was also the day when he remembered Ollie.

It had been shortly after dawn that next day when he had remembered Ollie, and how spectacularly shitty he had been to ditch him at the bar like that, as well as how spectacularly shitty to him in general. And to tell the truth, shitty for quite some time before that, because he had been kind of taken up with Bruce, and hadn’t really had much time or thought to spare for his best friend, and that really did make him a primo asshole.

Plus, there was that whole newly acquired self-knowledge thing. So he decided he would send Ollie a conciliatory text, which of course meant he had to find his phone. 

“What—are—you— _doing_ ,” Bruce had growled at him, as he rooted around in the bedclothes. Except it was Bruce, and it was morning, so it was a literal growl, entirely minus vowels and consonants, but definitely with teeth. 

“Phone,” he had whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

Bruce had harrumphed—yes, literally harrumphed—and seized the only remaining pillow that he had not already claimed, and wrapped himself in even more of the sheets, which he was more or less on top of like some kind of dragon hoard. How was it possible for one person to steal so much of the bed? Had he not noticed this before because before, they had been in Bruce’s giant football-field of a bed? Hal started laughing softly, and that of course did the trick – one lazy blue eye flicked open, then another.

“What are you laughing about?” came the guttural voice. It was the Batman voice, but about five registers lower, like Batman after an entire carton of Marlboro Reds.

“You,” Hal said, and that got him an arm that shot out and grabbed him. He was being dragged into the dragon’s lair, wrapped up in the sheets with him.

“I need to get to the field this morning, babe,” he whispered. 

“Mm. You left early last time. That means I get more time today,” Bruce said, and tucked Hal more firmly underneath him. He could feel Bruce take one or two deep breaths and begin to settle back into sleep. The dragon had every intention of keeping him chained here. 

“Oh you have got to be kidding me,” he sighed. Also, all of Bruce’s weight seemed to be settling right onto Hal’s spleen. 

Bruce shifted his head, and Hal caught the slow smirk, and the asshole was awake and just torturing him. Bruce’s hands were drifting up and down his sides now, stroking. Hal’s hands echoed Bruce’s, and soon they were just lying there, cocooned, their hands exploring like it was the very first time. And in some ways it was, because it struck him they had never actually had morning sex before. Always one or the other of them would be gone, the next morning, by unspoken agreement. Usually it was Hal, and Bruce might give him a morning growl or two, but that was it. This was new territory. 

“What are you in the mood for?” Bruce’s whisper brushed against his ear, and his mouth started working on Hal’s jaw. Hal shifted Bruce’s hand to their cocks, so he could wrap that hand around them both. Bruce was already half-hard. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Hal said.

They were quiet, quiet like they were afraid of being caught. And maybe they were; maybe there was a whole world out there waiting to catch them. But not in here, and not yet. Bruce’s hand felt so good, working him, working them both. They didn’t even need lube, not really—Bruce was so wet. God, Bruce was cranked. He had one hand around their cocks and one hand gripping Hal’s ass, kneading it. It was so good Hal tipped his head onto the pillow, closed his eyes, arched.

“Fuck I’m gonna come,” he whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Fuck. _Bruce_ ,” he groaned, and he was fucking into Bruce’s fingers, gripping Bruce’s arm, shooting hot and wet between those thick fingers that worked him and worked him. And then the longer, slower grunt of Bruce’s pleasure, as he panted open-mouthed through it, his hand finally slowing. Hal pulled him close, tight around his neck, so he could breathe in his space while he shuddered out the last of it. 

Bruce was as boneless and brain-wiped as he always was, after orgasm. Hal shifted them a little, and lifted Bruce’s mess of a hand. Lifted it to his mouth and licked it, cleaned him a little with the broad flat of his tongue. Both of them together. A mess, but a glorious one. 

“Gross,” Bruce chuckled.

“It was supposed to be romantic.” 

“Well what would you know about romance,” Bruce said, wiping his hand on the sheets and tucking Hal in closer. “All right, back to sleep.”

“What do you mean, I know a lot about romance. Tons. They call me the king of romance.”

“Nobody calls you that,” Bruce rumbled against him. They drifted for a while, and Bruce really did go back to sleep at some point, so Hal extricated himself with infinite care—once, Bruce had almost awakened and reclaimed him, but he had held his breath and slid out—and finally located his phone to text Ollie. 

Ollie, of course, didn’t answer, so Hal went to work and logged a couple of flights. But he skipped out on the rest of his flights after lunch and headed over to Oliver’s place, because he knew that Dinah would be at work and that Oliver, given his schedule, would probably still be shuffling around in his bathrobe yawning and hunting for coffee. He banged on the door until Ollie—in the predictable bathrobe, and just as predictably unshaven and squinty-eyed—opened the door.

“Hal?” he croaked. “What the hell—”

“I brought you coffee,” he said, and thrust it at him. 

Ollie yawned, and nodded, and shuffled back into the condo’s cool dark expanses. Hal followed. “So you kinda disappeared the other night,” Ollie said, flopping himself onto a vast sofa. 

“Yeah,” Hal said. “About that.”

Ollie was mainlining the coffee, but he waved his hand. “No worries,” he said. “I figured out what was up.”

Hal nodded, and studied his knotted hands. Now that he had come to it, this part was not so easy as maybe he had hoped. “Listen,” he said. “You asked me the other night about. . . about who I’d been seeing. When I said that things had been. . . not going well.”

“That you’d been dumped.”

“Which I had _not_ ,” Hal said.

“Oh okay, so you were crying into your beer the other night because things were going so great. Got it.”

Hal fell silent again, and studied his hands some more. “I was crying into my beer the other night because I had had to walk out on a relationship that meant a hell of a lot to me, and I only knew how much when I had to walk out,” he said. 

He finally glanced over at Ollie, who was wide awake now, his eyes as grave and watchful as they had been the other night. “So we’re being real now?” he said.

“Yeah,” Hal said. “We’re being real now.”

Ollie was unexpectedly quiet. Maybe he was the one who should say something. But the obvious thing to say was sticking in his throat. “There’s a lot of things I never told you,” Hal said.

“There’s a lot of things you never had to,” Ollie said. 

“We’re maybe not talking about the same things.”

“Yeah,” Ollie said, righting himself with a groan. “We are. It’s too early to be complicated, I ain’t got the brain space for it yet. My point is, I know you’re bi as fuck and I also know you’d sooner blow your brains out than talk about it, because that’s just Hal. We cool?”

“Well, Hal is an ass,” he said. “And also bi is probably not the right word. Also, it’s about goddamn time I talked about it.”

Oliver was nodding. The coffee appeared to have achieved maximum dosage effect. “So does that mean I get a question? On account of having been so righteously cool all these years with you not talking to me about shit, and also with you blowing me off the last two months, and being a dick to me when you did?”

“Yes, Saint Oliver, you get a question.”

“Were you telling me the truth, when you said it was Bruce you had been seeing?”

“Yeah, I was telling you the truth.”

He watched that land on Ollie, whose wide unblinking stare was beginning to unnerve him. “Well Jesus Christ, son,” Ollie finally said.

“There’s more.”

“Maybe I just better sit with this for a while.”

“Okay, but when I said that I had been seeing him, that’s not. . . completely accurate. More of a present tense thing than a past tense. We, ah. . . it’s still a thing, is what I’m trying to say.”

Ollie pressed his fingers to his forehead and closed his eyes. “You okay?” Hal said.

“Yup. All good. Just rearranging my universe. So, okay, just to be sure we’re on the same page here. We are talking about Bruce Wayne, right? The same guy whose name you can’t say without spitting out your teeth, who drives you up the fucking wall, the one that like nine-tenths of the time I have to remind you not to punch in the face, the same guy you once called a strawberry frosted douche cake, to his face? That guy?”

“Well, to be fair, all those things are still true.”

Ollie laughed. “Yeah I just bet. You always did get under each other’s skin a little too much.”

That was a startling assessment, and one he hadn’t thought of before—that maybe Bruce had driven him up the fucking wall, as Ollie said, because, well, Bruce drove him up the fucking wall. “So,” Ollie said, knocking his knee against Hal’s. “You in love?”

He blinked at Ollie in astonishment. That was the name of it? Of course that was the name of it, he was an idiot. He had woken up this morning knowing what he felt, he just hadn’t known there was a _name_ for it. Like, an everyday ordinary name, one people used all the time. It was like believing you had a secret disease because of a mole on your ass only to discover that oh yeah, everyone actually had that mole, it was no big deal. 

“Yeah,” Hal said. Ollie grinned.

“Welcome to the club, man. Ain’t it a bitch though?”

Hal thought of the rocket ride of the last forty-eight hours, the last week, the last three months. “Yeah,” he said ruefully. “That part gets better though, right?”

At that, Ollie threw back his head and laughed long and loud. “Hoo man, this is gonna be fun,” he said. “So you guys are good now?”

“Ah, yeah, going to be. We are. We’re. . . yeah. I mean, don’t worry, I’m not going to TMI you or anything.” He thought of Bruce as he had left him at his apartment that morning, naked and wrapped in his dragon-hoard of sheets, and tried to keep the ridiculous smile from creeping across his face. He gave a little laugh at the thought of what Ollie’s face would look like, if he told him about that.

Ollie wasn’t laughing. “Not gonna TMI me,” he said. “Because just giving me like, the vaguest possible idea of your relationship, that’s just too much information for any decent person to handle, is that it? Fucking Christ, man, you got any idea how much self-hating bullshit you got rolling around in that fucked-up head of yours? Like, the first clue?”

“Starting to,” he said. 

“Good. About fucking time.” And Ollie hauled himself up with another groan. He padded off to the kitchen, which took him a while because this place was even larger than Bruce’s penthouse, and he really needed fewer billionaires in his life. When Ollie returned he had a beer in each hand, and he passed one off to Hal.

“Drink up,” he said.

“Okay, ah, is this really what we’re doing now? Because it’s the middle of the day, and I actually have to—”

“This is really what we’re doing now.” He sat heavily back on the sofa and chugged off his beer. He wiped his mouth. “Breakfast of champions,” he said. “Okay, I’m good. Start when you’re ready.”

“Ah. . . start on what?”

Ollie made a vague gesture with his beer-free hand. “The story. The deal. The whole damn shooting match. You and Bruce. You dick me around for months, I at least get a story out of it. Start from the beginning, and go on from there. I got time.”

“Um. . . I don’t. . . this isn’t really something I. . .”

“That’s okay, I’ll help you out. What’s he like in bed? Fucking awesome, am I right? Come on, you can tell me. I’ve had my suspicions. It’s not like I haven’t wondered.”

“Okay, Ol, when I said I needed to talk more about it, I meant more like, talk about my feelings and things like—”

“You can tell me all about your fee-fees later. We can sit around and burn candles and read our journal entries out loud to each other, but right now we are doing the bros with beer thing and you are gonna give me the lowdown, capisce? So pony up, it’s time to kiss and tell.”

“I am definitely too sober for this,” Hal said, and tipped the beer back into his throat and swallowed it all down until he could no longer hear Oliver’s braying, joyous laugh.

* * *

He thought of that conversation with Ollie this evening, as he was driving away from the penthouse, his skin crackling with rage. He had known all afternoon, of course. After his conversation with Susan. Not even after; something deep in his gut had known the minute he heard her voice. It hadn’t taken any detective work at all. But what he hadn’t known, what he hadn’t been prepared for, was the lie. And all afternoon, pacing the floor, he had told himself that Bruce wouldn’t lie. That if he asked him, point blank, about Bishop Imports, Bruce would tell him the truth.

But that had not been what happened. Instead he had had to stand there and watch the studied nonchalance of Bruce’s face, the way there was absolutely zero tell on it, as he sat there and lied his ass off to Hal. Zero tell on that perfectly chiseled face. 

He needed to get up in the air, needed to get out of the stratosphere, in fact. Somewhere he could breathe. He punched the accelerator and opened it up on the freeway, and fumbled for his phone. Then he tossed it aside. Fuck it, not his problem. Forget it. Let somebody else worry about it for once. About him. And then he sighed and reached for the phone again. 

“Hey,” Clark said, on the first ring. “What’s up?”

“Nothing much,” Hal said. “Listen, you got anything going on tonight?”

“Don’t think so,” Clark said. He sounded like he was chewing on something. “Lo’s working late. Why, you got something in mind?”

“Yeah, I do. You might wanna track Bruce down tonight. I think. . . I think maybe you should go hang with him tonight.”

“Are you saying that because you’re not hanging with him tonight?”

“I am most definitely and one-thousand percent not with him tonight. In fact, I may be off-world for a while.” He had not meant his anger to show through in his voice.

“Hal. What the hell did he do?” 

“Just. . . go check on him, all right? It’s been a rough night, and I was thinking that maybe. . .” _I was thinking that maybe that bottle’s looking pretty good to him right now_ , was what he couldn’t, wouldn’t say. That was okay, Clark would hear it anyway.

“Sounds like it’s been a rough night for you, too.” There was warmth in Clark’s voice, and sympathy, and Hal’s throat tightened at it. 

“I’m fine,” he said. He veered onto the offramp for the exit to the airfield. It was late enough that traffic had died down on the freeway, but surface roads were still a fucking nightmare. “Just give him someone to growl at, yeah?”

“I will. But Hal?”

“Yeah.”

“You know I’m your friend too, right? And you can talk to me too. I am not somehow Bruce Wayne’s sole possession.”

Hal barked a laugh. “Well I’ll let you be the one to break that to him.” His chest ached, just saying that. It was like the last twenty-four hours had been erased, and he was back in this whole magical year, talking shit to Clark, laughing quietly with Bruce’s best friend about Bruce. 

The first time he had been to dinner at Lois and Clark’s, he had been so nervous his palms had practically started sweating, like a fucking teenager at the prom.

“What are you doing?” Bruce had said. He had been stretched on the bed in Hal’s apartment, reading his newspaper—a genuine newspaper, not his tablet, like he was eighty-seven years old for fuck’s sake. Also his shoes had been on the bed, which was irritating.

“What do you mean what am I doing? I’m just—I’m figuring out what to wear, all right?” And he had shrugged off the third shirt he had tried, because it made the douche factor go through the roof.

“What? Why?” Bruce was frowning at him. “Just wear clothes.”

“Yeah, says the man whose closet is stuffed with million-dollar suits.”

Bruce put down the newspaper. “Do you want me to take you shopping?”

“No, I do not want you to take me shopping, for God’s sake.”

“Why not?

“Because I am not Julia Roberts and this is not the first twenty minutes of Pretty Woman, that’s why the fuck not.”

Bruce shrugged and went back to his newspaper. “I don’t know why you’re so worked up about eating dinner with Clark and Lois, of all people.”

“Oh really. You just have no clue at all why I might be possibly the slightest bit—”

“Anxious?”

“No, I am not _anxious_ for fuck’s sake. I would just like. . . I just want it to go well, okay? I just want them not to think I’m a doucherocket, that’s all.”

“I don’t understand. These are people you know. Are you having some sort of brain aneurysm?”

“Yeah, they know Hal. They know _me_. Not me and _you_. Not, you know,” and he gestured back and forth between them. “This.”

“I promise you, ‘this’ is not going to be a topic of conversation at dinner. You’re being idiotic.”

“Oh right, because it’s idiotic for me to want your friends to like me?” He was studying the effect of a pale blue shirt, and shrugged his jacket on over it. The trouble was, now every shirt _looked_ like it was the sixth shirt he had put on, like he was wearing a sign or something. Like his nerves had sweated through the fabric of the shirt, and everything he put on now, he just looked like an asshole. 

A pair of arms encircled him, tightened on his middle as he stood there looking at himself in the mirror. They watched each other in the mirror. “They’re your friends too. And they already like you,” Bruce murmured. 

“But they might not like us.”

“Then fuck them,” Bruce said, and Hal grinned at him in the mirror, and Bruce gave a slow smile back. Hal twisted his head, and they kissed slowly, lazily, like they had the whole night in front of them and weren’t already running fifteen minutes late. Bruce pulled off.

“But the olive, I think.”

“You think?”

“Definitely.”

Of course they had been not fifteen minutes late, but thirty-five, because Bruce had sucked him right up against the closet door. There was a little bit of a cum stain on the inside of his pants, because Bruce had been less than careful, and which was not really visible but which he had complained about. Bruce had told him to leave it. _So I can think of it all through dinner_ , he had said, mouthing Hal’s ear, kissing his jaw. Sometimes Bruce said the most ridiculous shit, and no one would believe it if he told them. 

And then Clark and Lois had been gracious, and awesome, and welcoming, and not once had anyone acted like it was at all strange that Bruce was bringing Hal Jordan as his date to dinner at his best friend’s house. They acted like it was the most natural thing in the world, and when Bruce had casually rested his hand on Hal’s back, during some story Hal was telling at the table that had Lois grinning and Clark collapsed in generous laughter—when Bruce did that, no one had acted like it was the least bit unusual. Hal himself had forgotten to think of it as odd. Forgotten to think of them as odd. He would always be grateful to Clark and to Lois for the magic of that evening. 

“I’ve never seen Bruce this happy,” was all Clark had said to him, at the end of that night. Just a quiet aside, as they were putting dishes up in the kitchen together. Hal had glanced into the living room, where Bruce and Lois were geeking out about the congressional testimony that day, actually going through it stop-motion frame by frame on the big screen TV like it was a hockey game, the giant dorks. 

“Fucking nerds,” Hal had sighed.

“Oh yeah,” Clark had said cheerily. Bruce had glanced into the kitchen at just that moment, when Hal was looking, and met Hal’s eyes, and for just a moment everything else fell away, and Hal could read everything in Bruce’s eyes as he knew Bruce could read it in his, and there was no more pretense, and no need of words. Hal glanced hastily down at the dishes, but not before he felt Clark give his shoulder a squeeze. 

He tried not to think of that evening. Of everything he had felt then. 

“Listen,” Hal said, through a suddenly tight throat. “I gotta go. We’ll catch up when I get back, all right?”

“So you are coming back?”

Clark’s bald question caught him unaware. Clark had a habit of not beating around the bush. “I. . . I don’t know, man. I guess. Let me just—I need to get away for a bit, that’s all I know.”

“Okay,” Clark said. “Well, I’ll be here when you get back. And in case you needed to hear someone else say it, here is your regular reminder that Bruce is an idiot.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.” He clicked off and tossed the phone on the seat beside him.  
 


	10. Chapter 10

He took an assignment in a sector that was about as far away from Earth as he could manage, and kept ignoring the issue of when he would head back. There was something incredibly freeing about being out of communications reach from Earth. Having no phone to look at meant he didn’t have to know whether his phone was blowing up with texts and calls, or whether it was sitting there silent. 

Actually, he knew which one it was.

So after three weeks, he told the Corps he would take an even longer rotation in Theta sector, one that would require him to be away for six months or more. He would need to head back to Earth briefly before he shipped out, to make arrangements about his rent and his car and things like that. He wouldn’t have to be there long; he told himself he could just zip in and out. He wouldn’t even have to look at his phone. Although there was a whole conversation with Carol he was not looking forward to, and she would have every right to yell at him and probably throw things at him. Carol wasn’t much for throwing, though. She usually went right for punching, which would be fine except that her right hook was fucking vicious, and there was very little warning for it. 

And after he did all the car and apartment stuff, and was getting ready to head over to the airstrip, he told himself there was just one more stop. Just one more, and it would just be for a minute. 

He parked his car in its customary spot in the parking garage, and walked through the sleek marble lobby and punched the button for the thirty-seventh floor.

He didn’t know why he needed to see it, but he did.

Maybe it was because he needed to say a good-bye, but knew he couldn’t say it to Bruce. And this place. . . this place was as close as he could get to that.

He had half-expected the door code would have been changed, but it hadn’t been. The place was dark and empty, as he had known it would be. He went and stood by the window, leaning against it, and stared for the last time at that incredible view of the skyline, the view so few people ever got a chance to see. Most people, normal people, lived their lives a little closer to ground level. Most people with a view like this, they had done some nasty shit to get it. Not Bruce, of course. It wasn’t his fault he had been born rich. But still. It changed you, that kind of money. Made you think things about yourself and the world that weren’t true. Made you forget what you could and couldn’t do, what you did and did not have a right to. Like other people’s lives.

Hal closed his eyes and leaned his head against the glass. Like beating your head against a glass wall, he thought. 

If there was a place that was theirs, a place where they were them, it was here. The Manor and the Cave, those were Bruce’s spaces; his apartment was his. This had felt like neutral ground, a place apart from the rest of their lives. A place where they could just be themselves, and all the rest of what was waiting out there for them could be held at bay. 

Maybe he stood there a long time, and maybe he was more lost in thought than he had reckoned, because he heard the steps behind him, the steps that stopped at the wide archway of the living room, but he had missed the opening of the door.

“I thought I might find you here,” was all Bruce said. 

“Yeah,” Hal said. “Well, I’m on my way out. And I guess you thought you might find me here because every inch of this place has cameras, huh?”

“No. But the parking garage does, and I might have programmed it to alert me to the presence of your car.”

“That’s not something normal people do,” Hal murmured, still staring at the view. 

“You fly through space in green spandex, I think I’ll take lessons in normal from someone else.”

Hal’s laugh died in his throat. “Fair,” he said. “But I gotta get going now.”

“Yes, I know. I’m not trying to keep you here. But I need to tell you something. That’s why I was monitoring for your presence, because there’s something you need to know, and I had no other way of getting in touch with you, which was, I imagine, the point.”

“Yep.”

“The thing you need to know is this,” Bruce said. “When last we spoke, three weeks ago, you accused me of fucking with your family. I think it is important for you to know that I did not.”

“Jesus Christ,” Hal muttered.

“Please hear me out. In destroying Jim Jordan you said that I fucked with your family. It’s important that you understand this: I did not. He fucked with mine.”

Hal turned and frowned. “You—”

“ _He_ fucked with _mine_ ,” Bruce said. “I don’t know what word describes us. We’ve spent the better part of a year avoiding finding any words for it, it seems to me. But whatever the word is, you are my family. And when anyone fucks with my family, sooner or later, I will destroy them. I will rain fucking hellfire, and I will use every weapon in my arsenal. I will salt the earth with their blood. He fucked with my family, and so he got what was coming to him.”

This would be the place to say something, anything, but Hal’s throat had clenched too tight for that. Bruce’s eyes were hollow, and he could use a shave, but it was him, and Bruce’s presence had its usual effect on him—like a mild intoxicant. Christ but it was easy to forget how beautiful he was. 

“So yes, leave me because I lied to you,” Bruce continued. “Leave me because I hid what I had done from you. Those were mistakes, mistakes I will own and apologize for. Leave me for a thousand well-justified reasons. I was wrong to do those things, but do not—” And here he pointed at Hal. “Do _not_ stand there and tell me that that man— _that_ man—is your family, and I am not. Do not fucking dare do that.”

Family. 

_Families are complicated_ , he had said to Bruce all those months ago, when Bruce had first asked him about Jim. He thought he had known the truth of that statement. He hadn’t begun to know the truth of it. 

“Nobody’s leaving,” Hal whispered.

“Really,” Bruce said. “Three weeks without hearing from you. That sure as hell felt like leaving.”

“I’m sorry,” Hal said, and Bruce appeared to have no answer to that. So Hal crossed the room to him and stood in front of him, and this was one of the many times he was glad Bruce did not have a single quarter-inch of height on him, and Hal could meet his eyes level for level. 

“You will not,” Hal said, “ever lie to me again. Ever. For any reason.”

Bruce’s eyes flicked across his face, scanning every millimeter, resting at last on his eyes. Hal watched him weighing the ultimatum, watched him consider it. At last, slowly, Bruce nodded. 

“Thank you,” Hal said. 

They watched each other, from inches away. Just breathing in each other’s space. Saying in silence the things they had never successfully put into words. “I have something for you,” Bruce said softly, and then he walked to the kitchen, and came back with a handful of papers. He spread them out on the table.

“What is this?”

“I left these here for when you returned, if you ever returned. It’s the title to the penthouse, and associated documents.”

Hal frowned at Bruce, then frowned at the papers. “Why is this for me?” he said, and that was when he saw the header of the largest document, that said _Co-owners: R. Bruce Wayne and Harold Jordan_. “Bruce, what did you do,” he said.

“I should think it’s obvious. I’ve listed you on the deed of this place, and when you sign these documents it will be as much yours as mine. You’ve walked out that door twice now, so I figured you might be tired of that. The next time, you can just tell me to get the hell out.”

Bruce spoke lightly, but he was watching Hal. As always. Words behind the words. “Now tell me why,” Hal said. “The real why.”

“Because this is the best I can do.”

“The best you can do? Best you can do with what? Bruce, what the hell are you talking about?”

“We can’t be married,” Bruce said. “You know we can’t. I know we can’t. The level of scrutiny that would bring to both of us—it’s just not possible. Even a marriage on the down-low is going to turn up in some tabloid’s weekly records search. But a title search, that’s not something anyone would do. So this is what we can do.”

Hal considered. He looked at the title document. “Yours and mine, huh,” he said. 

“That’s the idea.”

Hal picked up the pen. “Okay,” he said. “Where do I sign?”

“Here. And here.” Bruce flipped the page. “Also here.”

“Done and done,” Hal said. “As much mine as yours, huh?”

“Ah. With one slight difference I might have forgotten to mention.”

“Of course. And that would be what?”

“You have the exclusive right of sale, which I do not. If at any time, for any reason, you wish to sell, you may do so without my consent. I do not have right of sale, so there is a legal sense in which the place is rather more yours than mine. That also makes it easier for you if you would like to borrow against the value of the property at any point. The appraised value of the property is on the next page, if you care to look.”

Hal glanced at the figure, and choked. “Okay, that. . . really? That’s like, dollars American?”

“It’s an approximate reflection of market value, obviously. You could hire your own real estate appraiser if you prefer.” 

“Ah, thanks, I’m good.” He turned and looked at the table, and the papers spread on top of it. He was still holding the pen. “I don’t. . . I kind of don’t know what to say here. This is. . .” He couldn’t come up with what it was. Although that wasn’t really true. He knew the word for what they had just done. It had just been the two of them, with no witnesses, and it had just been a couple of pieces of paper. But it was all the ceremony they would ever have. All the ceremony he would ever need. 

Hal set the pen on the table. He put his hands on either side of Bruce’s face, just holding him there. He brushed his thumbs on Bruce’s cheekbones, the sharp angles of them. Bruce’s eyes fluttered. “You,” Hal said, “are a fucking prick. A complete and utter asshole. An infuriating, domineering, condescending, six-ways-to-Sunday patented doucherocket of an asshole. You are like, a giant emotional disorder with legs and a bank account. You ought to come with so many warning labels slapped on you that your eyeballs are barely visible. You know all this, right?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Then you should also know this. You are also maybe the best person I have ever met, and I love you so fucking, fucking much that it causes me physical pain when I breathe in. Like I can’t even breathe around it sometimes, is how much I love you. You walk into a room, and everything in that room is fucking alive for me, like the molecules in the room are more alive, and how fucked up is that? That is how much I love you. That is what I am going to spend the rest of my fucking life teaching you. You get that?”

Bruce shut his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered. 

“Good. Then by the power vested in me by absolutely no one, I declare this apartment ours.” He dropped his hands. “You may kiss the new millionaire.” 

Bruce’s slow smile was heartstoppingly beautiful. He slipped his arms around Hal, and kissed him as slow as he had smiled. Kissed him until the backs of Hal’s knees felt like they were melting, kissed him until what had begun as a kiss was becoming a slow sensuous tongue-fuck of his entire throat, and it was so good Hal moaned into it. 

“God, we need to fuck,” he panted. “Also, Jesus Christ, you really need to shave, I am not all about that.”

“I didn’t know you would be back,” Bruce murmured against his jaw. He was suckling and licking his way down to Hal’s neck. 

“Mm, yeah, but I am now,” he said, pulling Bruce’s arms off him. “Come on, we can make it a fun adventure to the bathroom together, it’ll be sexy. Sexy funtimes.”

“Shaving is not sexy.”

“No, but sexy will be what happens to you after you shave. Come on, one foot in front of the other, you can do it,” Hal said, and tugged him in the direction of the bathroom. Their bathroom. 

Of course, Bruce was entirely wrong about the shaving not being sexy part, because Bruce was only half-shaven when the casual making out got a bit out of control, and Hal had him up against the bathroom counter and began stripping him, and why had they never done it in the bathroom before? Because mirrors?? Bruce’s ass looked pretty damn amazing under normal lighting conditions, but backlit and like, viewed in triplicate from six different directions at once was enough to make Hal moan and dribble cum before he even got his pants off. 

“Wanna fuck you, can I fuck you,” Hal whispered in his ear, and he was going to take Bruce’s boneless collapse against him as a yes, and that was the story of how he fucked Bruce up against the bathroom sinks on their fake wedding night, long and slow and deep, with Bruce bent over so far he was clutching onto the faucet. There was also, somehow, shaving cream everywhere. Shaving cream on parts there really should not be shaving cream. Bruce’s face had only been half done when they had started.

But the view was unparalleled. He could see Bruce’s thick cock in the mirror, could watch it sway as he fucked into him, and who knew that was the thing he had been missing in his life? “Jerk yourself,” Hal whispered, and wrenched Bruce’s mouth to his for another searing kiss, only this one was literally searing because he got a mouthful of shaving cream and ended up gagging and spitting it out onto the floor and trying to wipe his mouth on Bruce’s shoulder, which was shaking with laughter. Hal slapped the back of his head.

“Focus, I am being sexy here,” he said, but Bruce just laughed harder. So in the end they had called a pause and wiped down and adjourned to the bed, which had fewer mirrors but was A-plus in the mattress department. And they got to do the position Bruce liked best anyway, when he was getting fucked, which was him face-down into the mattress and just humping the mattress, getting off on the friction while Hal fucked into him. Hal liked it because he could always tell where Bruce was on the ride to orgasm by how tightly his fists were wound in the sheets. They were probably thousand-dollar sheets with an eleventy billion thread count, but one of these days Bruce was going to rip them apart when he groaned and came massively. Hal’s orgasm felt like it was emptying not just his balls but every internal organ, like every part of him was shooting out his cock, and into the sick delicious folds of Bruce’s body. 

Afterward they lay sprawled and limp athwart the giant bed, passing a water bottle back and forth. 

“How is there still shaving cream everywhere,” Hal muttered, wiping another smear off the underside of his arm. 

He woke at three AM and remembered, like a sword in his belly, the six-month assignment to the Theta sector. Shit. Shit shit shit shit holy fucking shit. So he dressed silently and quickly, gathering whatever there was of his clothes that wasn’t covered in shaving cream and cum, and went out to the living room so he could try to open a communications channel with Kilowog through his ring.

“Okay, but it was a volunteer situation,” he whispered desperately to Kilowog’s increasingly skeptical face. “They’ll have to understand if I want to back out, right? Maybe I can tell them I have liver cancer?”

“I think you have made many plans in your life, my friend, and this is the stupidest.”

“Kilowog, six months. Six _months_. They can’t hold me to this, not when I volunteered! Surely that has to count for something. Look, I bet the mission is overstaffed anyway, I bet they don’t actually need four Lanterns for that entire tour. I’m just saying, you have better connections than I do at headquarters—”

“Meaning people do not wish to set fire to me when they see me coming.”

“Yes, that would be what I mean. Come on, man,” he said, leaning forward. “I know you have the juice to pull this off for me, you know the people to talk to. I swear, I would owe you for the rest of my life. Huge. This would be the biggest favor you could ever, ever do me. If you could find it in your heart to—”

“What were those things you brought me from Earth last time?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The sticks! The brown sticks with the crust on them. It was like nothing I have ever tasted.”

“I don’t. . . the sticks? Do you mean. . . Are you talking about Pocky?”

“Yes! That was the name of it. Bring me one thousand Pocky, and the favor is yours.”

“You want a thousand Pocky sticks.”

“Yes, that is what I want.”

“A thousand is like—dude, that’s about two hundred dollars worth of Pocky, I’m not sure that—”

“No Pocky, no deal.”

“All right, all right man, you got it. I will bring you one thousand Pocky sticks, you demented pig. Just get me out of this assignment.” 

“Excellent!” And Kilowog clicked off. The green glow subsided, and in the dark, as his vision returned, he could see the outline of Bruce, standing naked in the doorway. Where he had evidently been for some time. 

“Hey,” Hal said. “Sorry, did I—I was just—”

“Six months,” Bruce said flatly, and it was dark, so Hal couldn’t really see his face, but he was pretty sure he didn’t need to. 

“I was mad,” Hal said. “Okay, I was mad, and I wasn’t thinking, and—and—I’m pretty sure this can be fixed, and my point is, I made a mistake, all right? A mistake I can fix.”

Bruce was nothing but still. “Don’t ever lie to me, you said, while lying to me.”

“No! No, I wasn’t lying to you, I had completely forgotten, it was just—it was not even in my head, all right, and then seeing you like that, and you, you kind of took me by surprise there, and—”

“Nobody is leaving, you said, while preparing to leave me. Because if I hadn’t come here last night, if I hadn’t stopped you, you would be shipping out right now, isn’t that correct?”

Hal put his hands on his hips and studied the lush carpet. He let the silence fall, let it rest between them. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, that’s correct.”

Bruce turned, but he didn’t go back to the bedroom. He turned and rested his head against the doorframe. Just rested it there, with his eyes closed.

“Bruce, come on,” he said, “don’t,” but he didn’t know what he was telling him to don’t about, and even he could hear how weak it sounded, how pathetic.

“Six months,” Bruce murmured. “You were going to walk.”

“I was wrong. Babe, please listen to me, I was wrong, okay? I fucked up.”

“You’re gone for three weeks, and during that time I’m thinking, how do I show him what family means to me? How do I show him what this means to me? And all that time you’re getting ready to bail.”

Hal went and sat on the sofa and put his head in his hands. “I don’t know how many more times I can say I made a mistake,” he said. 

“It’s always the thing I’m doing wrong,” Bruce said, his voice still soft. “I drink too much, I invade your privacy, I say things I shouldn’t, I destroy your family. Fine, let’s say all of that is true. But let’s also in the same breath acknowledge you have had a foot out the door since this whole thing started, and your homophobic maladjusted ass took the first opportunity it possibly could to bail, just like you have since day one.”

“What?” Hal raised his head. “ _What_ did you just say to me? I think I have been very clear where I stand on the whole bailing thing, or don’t you remember _any_ of what I said to you last night? Because I sure as hell do, and I also happen to remember you never fucking said it back.”

Bruce frowned. “Yes I did.”

“Ah, no, you actual facts did not. Tongue-fucking does not count.”

“I am almost certain that I did say it back.”

“When? When did you? Give me the time and the place, come on, tell me exactly what you said.”

Bruce crossed his arms. “It was in the bathroom.”

“In the _bathroom_ , are you fucking kidding me? We were climbing the walls like deranged fuckmonkeys covered in shaving cream, _that’s_ not the time to say it back! Who the hell knows what you said in there, but I’m pretty sure most of it was _please baby harder fuck fuck harder!_ Which sounds awesome when you’re getting plowed up the ass, but is not exactly what I want written on the wedding cake, thank you very fucking much!”

Bruce put his face in his hands. Hal was a little unsure what was happening. Bruce put his hands down and turned his face aside, and Hal could see that he was laughing. “Laughing,” Hal said incredulously. “This is when you choose to laugh?”

“Sorry, I was just—imagining the cake.”

Hal bit his lip. He could see it too now—pink florets at the corners, and rainbow hearts. “It’s kind of a shame we can’t actually have that on a cake,” Hal said. “Because it would one-hundred percent be worth it for Clark’s face.”

The rich warm of Bruce’s laugh rolled over Hal’s skin like a benediction, and he moved in, seized his moment, which was maybe the only moment he would have. 

“Please, baby, I fucked up,” he said, grabbing at his hand. “I fucked up so hard. I am probably going to keep fucking up. But so are you. And we’ll yell and freak out, and then fuck up some more. But in between, sex. I think—I kind of think this is how it goes.”

“Well, this is exhausting.”

“Welcome to the club, Ollie said.”

“What? When did he say that?”

“A while back. When I first told him about us. It was—I think he was giving me advice, or something. It was terrifying.”

“Guided by the wisdom of Oliver Queen. God help me, how did this become my life.” But the smile was still lurking in the corners of his beautiful mouth. Bruce rested a heavy hand on the back of Hal’s neck, and they tipped their foreheads together, resting there. 

“Let’s go to bed,” Bruce said, after a minute. “I’m dead on my feet. We can always fight another day.”

“Promise?”

“Oh I think I can guarantee it.”

They shuffled off to the bed and fell into it, where they lay silent and wrapped in the sheets. They didn’t speak any more, but they didn’t sleep either. They touched, and that was all the conversation they tried. Things worked better that way anyway. They knotted their hands loosely and stayed like that. Toward morning Hal raised his head. “Okay,” he whispered, “but I am gonna do some serious re-decorating around here.”

“The hell you are,” Bruce rumbled, and Hal laughed, and put his head back down. After a while Bruce rolled closer and put his head on Hal’s chest, and they stayed like that for a long while. 

“Nobody is leaving,” Hal whispered into the dawn, so quietly that Bruce might not have heard him, except for the hand that tightened on his. 

 


	11. Epilogue: Probability

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story Diana tells is shamelessly stolen from [this tumblr post](https://caligularib.tumblr.com/post/154989663271/taraljc-lemonsharks-rederiswrites-im), sent to me by the very kind [caligula rib](https://caligularib.tumblr.com/post/154989663271/taraljc-lemonsharks-rederiswrites-im) ([Tiberius_Tibia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiberius_Tibia) on AO3.)

“Okay, that is not at all how the story goes,” Hal said, yelling over the chorus of laughter. “Barry is fucking delusional, I’m telling you.”

“I don’t know, Hal, his memory seems pretty clear to me,” Lois said, and Hal flicked an olive pit at her, from his stash beside his plate. 

“No no, I think Hal is right,” Diana said. “We forget what a hero the Green Lantern is to many. Why just this afternoon I was in the park and I saw two little boys playing with a toy Green Lantern ring, imagining they were heroes, using their imagination. It was very inspiring.”

“See? Thank you, Diana, voice of reason as always.”

“Okay, if Diana’s your voice of reason, things are not looking so good for you,” Clark said with a grin, pouring himself some more wine and passing the bottle down the table. Oliver took a generous refill, and handed it across the table to Bruce and Hal. Bruce refilled Hal’s glass and silently passed the bottle on, skipping his own untouched wine glass. Underneath the table, Hal gave Bruce’s knee a squeeze.

“But my story is not finished,” Diana said. “So this one little boy, he is explaining to the other little boy about what a Lantern ring can do. This other little boy is very astonished. You mean the ring can make _anything?_ And the first little boy says yes, anything. The most awesome thing you could imagine, and the ring can do it! So I am listening to them play, as I sit on the bench and read my book, and after a while I hear the other little boy say, ‘Ring, make me the Flash!’”

The table exploded in laughter, none louder than Bruce’s. “Fuckin harsh, man,” Oliver called. Bruce had his arm casually draped over the back of Hal’s chair, and a wide easy grin on his face, as he laughed at Diana’s story. Hal leaned over and smacked the back of his head, which only made Bruce laugh harder. 

“All right, I see how it is, I see how I’m treated here,” Hal said, getting up. “Clark, point me to your music, man, because I don’t know how much more Cat Stevens I can listen to. There’s chill, and then there’s comatose.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Cat Stevens is—”

“The greatest musical genius that ever lived, got it, but your taste in music still sucks,” he said, scrolling through Clark’s music. “Oh my God, how much fucking Ani DeFranco can one person own? Jesus Christ, there are _three_ Enya albums on here. Lois, are you aware that your man is a 90s college lesbian?”

“It works for us,” she called from the kitchen.

“So as I was saying some twenty minutes ago,” Dinah said at the other end of the table, and she launched back into her story about the time Ollie had decided that a cross-country road trip was going to be the most romantic adventure of their lives, and they had ended up changing a tire on the Jersey turnpike, only Ollie had been showing off his mechanical skills by sliding under the car, which would have been fine except that Dinah was loosening the lug nuts on the spare at the same time, and the tire fell on his literal face. Hal came and sat back down, but he was only listening with one ear, still absorbed in Clark’s highly disturbing musical collection, and absently rubbing at Bruce’s thigh under the table with his other hand.

Bruce leaned in to whisper in his ear. “You keep doing that, and I’m going to develop a problem that will keep me here at this table for a while.”

Hal smiled and whispered back. “Because three times this afternoon is just not enough for you?”

“Not where you’re concerned.” 

Hal squeezed his thigh harder and waited for another round of laughter at the other end of the table before leaning in to whisper again. “Is this one of those times when you forgot Clark can hear everything we’re saying, or one of those times when you’re torturing him?”

To Hal’s left, Clark balled up his napkin and threw it unerringly at Bruce’s face, while studiedly not looking at them. Hal laughed, and kept his hand where it was. Clark had strange things like entire albums of Beatles covers in acoustic guitar that he just could not figure out. “Explain,” Hal said, handing him the phone. 

“Oh,” Clark said. “Okay, yeah, that—I went through kind of a guitar phase for a while. I was trying to learn guitar and I thought that would be inspirational.”

“Oh yeah, you play?”

Clark winced. “It didn’t go very well. Mainly I just never had the time for it. I’ve still got the guitar, though. Hope springs eternal.”

“Cool, can I take a look?”

“Sure,” Clark said, and returned in a few minutes with a guitar so beautiful Hal could feel his saliva response.

“Holy fuck, you bought a Gibson, are you fucking for real?”

“Well, it’s second-hand. It’s not one of their top of the line models, obviously. And I never really—”

“Shut up and give me that,” Hal said, snatching the treasure from his unworthy hands. Oliver had launched into a story now, but Hal’s attention was absorbed in the guitar, which hadn’t been tuned in years because Clark was a criminal who did not deserve nice things. He strummed it idly, working with the tuning, aware that Bruce was watching him with a frown.

“What,” Hal said. “I can’t have hidden depths?”

“I just never heard you mention it.”

Hal shrugged. “Jack was the musical one. But he was way older, out of the house by the time I was twelve. I inherited his guitar, and taught myself. You can best believe Martin wasn’t gonna pay for lessons for me.” He bent closer, trying to hear what was going on with that D string, which seemed a little wonky.

It felt freeing, these days, to think of his dad as someone he had never quite seen him for before – as Martin, an asshole with serious issues but not necessarily anything more than that. He was just beginning to navigate all that, and Bruce – for fucking once – was leaving him in peace about it. Not that they hadn’t discussed it. “All right, I know what your next move is going to be,” Hal had said one night a few weeks ago, as they were lying in bed.

“Mm,” Bruce had said, like always, and Hal had nudged at him, not that gently. 

“Bullshit you’re asleep. So listen, I know exactly what you have planned in that fucked-up head of yours, and I’m telling you not to do it. I can smell it from a mile away. Bruce, don’t you dare go trying to find my biological father or any weird-ass shit like that, you understand me? Because I know the way you think, and the last thing I need is you dragging my entire paternal family onto the doormat like an offering from a demented housecat. Are we clear? Stay the fuck away.”

Bruce had been silent. “Jesus Christ you already did it, didn’t you,” Hal said. 

Bruce had rolled over and faced him. “No,” he said. “If by that you mean, have I made contact with anyone. But I have done some. . . investigating. Preliminary investigating only.”

“Oh my God,” Hal groaned. “Of course you did. Why am I even questioning.”

“Hal. It hasn’t gone any further. It won’t, until you give me the word.”

“This is as close to self-restraint as you are going to get, isn’t it.” 

Bruce had looked faintly puzzled, and Hal could only laugh. He pulled him down onto his chest. “I don’t wanna know, okay?” he whispered. “About any of it. Just stick that file somewhere. . . somewhere I don’t have to look at it for a long time. Maybe never. Swear to me.”

“You have my word,” Bruce said, and Hal knew it was true. 

Hal concentrated on the D string, in the warm light of Clark’s dining room, listening to Ollie rattle endlessly on, but it didn’t matter what he was saying, it was just the sound of his voice that was nice. For now, he had enough family. “I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me,” he hummed aimlessly as he plucked out the opening chords of _Let It Be_. He lost himself in the chords for a bit, and only stopped when he realized that everyone else had, and they were all listening to him. And then Dinah’s rich alto joined him on the chorus, and they were singing together.

The room was silent when they were done, and then Bruce took the guitar from him and set it on the table, and leaned in and kissed him, right on the lips. It was not something he had ever done in public. Just a brush of his lips, and Hal smiled at him and squeezed his hand. 

“You never kissed me after I played,” Clark remarked to Lois.

“That’s because you never sounded like that,” she said, dropping a kiss on the top of his head on her way to the living room. 

After that, Ollie insisted on something that rocked a little more, and no amount of persuading would convince him that Hal could not actually play any Iron Maiden on the guitar, so Hal eventually caved and handed the guitar off to Ollie, who seemed convinced it couldn’t be that hard. The wine was buzzing pleasantly in Hal’s veins, and even more pleasant was Bruce beside him, his eyes never straying too far from Hal, his leg resting against Hal’s. Idly Hal considered pulling him into the bathroom and making out with him, but it was a one-bathroom apartment, and that might be rude. Also impractical: any time he and Bruce got something started, it didn’t stop, and it was only ending one way. Maybe “learning to make out” could be a relationship goal.

Bruce’s mind was probably more or less on the same track, because by the time they got back to the penthouse Bruce was cranked. Bruce had him up against the wall and was full-on grinding into him, while also trying to punch in the door code. He broke off and frowned at the pad after the third unsuccessful try, before Hal remembered.

“Oh yeah, hang on,” Hal said, reaching under him to the pad. “Sorry. Changed it yesterday.”

“You did what?”

“442255.”

“Which is?”

“Hiball, obviously. If I’m gonna have a door code it is goddamn well gonna be my call sign.”

“Flyboys,” Bruce growled, and shoved him back against the wall, this time with intent. God, nothing felt as good as Bruce when he was in the mood for a grind. Their sex life had two modes: either they needed about sixteen square feet of space in every direction and eight solid hours, or they needed five minutes against a wall, and a handful of Kleenex.

“Okay, so,” Hal managed, wrenching his mouth away, “just to be clear, fucking in the hallway is the plan? Because I think you and I both know that bench over there is not going to be our friend, or are you forgetting last time?”

Bruce growled and started in on the other side of his neck. “Not my fault,” he said.

“Okay, in the door we go, I am not gonna sit in the building manager’s office again and try to explain what happened. In you go, you can do this.”

He got Bruce in the door and up against a wall that was at least inside. They hadn’t turned on any lights, and the penthouse was dark. Hal slowed it down, downshifting their frantic grind a bit. “You wanna drive?” Bruce whispered, tender against his face, and Hal shook his head.

“No,” he whispered back. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“I really wanted to take you into Clark’s bathroom and get off with you tonight like we were horny fourteen-year-olds. Kinda wish I had.”

“Me too.”

“Show me what you would have done,” Hal whispered, kissing him again. 

And that was how Hal ended up on his back in the bed, getting fucked until the pleasure was so intense he cried out. It was funny, because objectively speaking they did a lot of sexing, and were definitely what you would have to call adventurous, but good old face-to-face was not something they did a whole lot of. But tonight that was what Bruce wanted. Hal could tell that he didn’t want to stop looking, and Hal didn’t either, really. It was how they worked best. Words weren’t always the thing they did best, and even fucking sometimes went awry, but eyes never did. A flick of Bruce’s eyes his direction, and he could tell you exactly what he was thinking; a steady look aimed at Bruce, and it would do more to rein him in than ten minutes of yelling. 

“Fuck this feels so good,” Hal panted. Something about this angle, some magic in it tonight, was making him shake with how good it was. Bruce’s cock kept up a steady rhythm, deep and sharp at the same time. “ _Fuck._ ” 

He reached up and grabbed at the headboard. “Fuck,” he moaned again. “Jesus Christ what are you doing, fuck fuck fuck.” He arched his neck back into the pillow, writhed, and just let himself go, let himself get fucked on that glorious cock that was hitting all the right spots tonight. He curled his legs tighter around Bruce, dug his fingers into those glorious shoulders, let himself groan all the glorious obscenities he wanted to. 

Bruce’s fingers gripped him to the point of pain. The slight shift in angle meant his cock slid even deeper, and Hal cried out. “I’m gonna fucking come—shit—what the—”

And then Bruce’s groan, louder even than his. His fingers were bruising. “Fuck,” Bruce whispered, shuddering, and Hal knew he was coming, could feel the wet pulse of Bruce emptying his balls in him.

“Fuck yes,” Hal managed, and grabbed at his own cock, pumping himself right over the edge along with Bruce. Heaving, Bruce curled his head down to rest against Hal’s. Hal was still shuddering with the last of his orgasm. 

“Sorry,” Bruce husked. He closed his hand loosely over Hal’s, milking the end of his pleasure with him. Bruce was still breathing hard. “You have to. . . not do that,” he panted. 

The neural lightning storm was just beginning to subside in Hal’s body, and a sweet heaviness was settling onto his skin. Bruce shifted a little, and slid out. Hal gave another shudder at it. Bruce was still nuzzling at him. 

“Do what,” Hal said drowsily.

“Make those noises,” Bruce said. “That was all. . . mmm. . . your fault. Didn’t meant to come that soon.”

“Oh, my fault huh.” But he was secretly pleased, and even allowed Bruce a few minutes of bone-crunching collapse on top of him, which was rarely his favorite thing, but felt good tonight. 

“You’ve got fourteen seconds before I need my spleen back,” Hal whispered in his ear.

“Better make it count then,” Bruce said, settling in for more kissing. And truth was, part of Hal was not displeased that he had turned Bruce “Let Me Show You How The Sex Is Done” Wayne into a frantically humping teenager coming all over himself. 

After a few minutes he gently shifted Bruce to the side, but kept them wrapped closely. Bruce was drifting right to sleep. Hal brushed a thumb over his brow, just to watch his eyes stutter open, a quick flick of gray in the darkened bedroom, and then shut again. Hal was shipping out in a few more days, and it would be some weeks before he was back. Who knew whether Bruce would be in Gotham – or even this hemisphere – when he got back. Well, they were here now. It would do. 

Sometimes he thought about it, about what his life would look like right now if down in the Cave that day, he hadn’t taken the chance and leaned in and told Bruce he could name the time and the place. Almost he hadn’t. Almost he had thought, nah, fuck it. He still couldn’t say what had made him do it, other than a genetic propensity to what the hell, a need to roll the dice and double down. Sometimes he wondered if they would have found a way other than that way, if he had just walked away that day; if eventually Bruce’s mild interest or his own curiosity would have gotten them there. Maybe there was a universe out there in which none of this had happened, and in which Bruce Wayne and Hal Jordan were still more-or-less colleagues, uneasy friends, occasional enemies, allies eyeing each other watchfully. It was a vast multiverse, so the odds were excellent that in most of them, that was exactly the case, and it was only by the barest chance they had found each other, in this one. 

“Now who’s brooding too loud,” Bruce whispered, folding him closer, and Hal smiled, let himself drift off, cradled by those improbable arms.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Solis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15332496) by [Qais](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qais/pseuds/Qais)




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